Here’s the easier-reading, link-annotated, “naming-names” version of the COUP INDICTMENT!
(So WHICH indictment is this one? It’s the one in which an EX-president tries to replace the REAL president with HIMSELF!)
The following was published by the Washington Post on the very day they announced Trump’s third federal indictment:
“JERRY RAMSEY, 79 ... DIDN’T FEEL THE NEED TO LEARN THE INTRICACIES OF THE CASE AGAINST TRUMP. AS HE SAW IT, THE 45-PAGE INDICTMENT WAS JUST ANOTHER EFFORT TO TEAR DOWN THE COUNTRY HE, A VIETNAM VET, HAD WORKED SO HARD TO DEFEND.
‘THEY JUST DREAM STUFF UP ’ HE SAID. ‘THEY JUST KEEP COMING AFTER HIM.’ ”
Truth be known, of course? Ramsey just might have his loyalties completely backwards! In MY PERSONAL view,
“The country” that Mr. Ramsey, a Vietnam vet, “had worked so hard to defend” keeps “coming after” some guy who “worked so hard” to “tear down the COUNTRY” — the exact same one!! — that Mr. Ramsey “had worked so hard to defend.”
What do I think? Methinks Mr. Ramsey needs to give this more thought.
But first, I should start by telling you what this particular issue of BSJ is all about:
What follows this introduction is a long post (yeah, veerrry long! maybe about the size of a small book!) of all forty-five pages of Donald J. Trump’s third indictment, the one about “January 6” — but with a few of my own additions, to make it not just much more informative, but also much easier to read.
The “easy-reading” part came about when I first tried to just read the indictment myself, and my eyes kept tripping over my brain every time I came to terms like, “the Defendant” (“Wait! That means, um, ‘Trump’, right?”) but especially stuff like “co-conspirator 4” (“Okay, one more time: which one was co-conspirator 4?”) and “the Acting Deputy Attorney General” (“Dammit!! Who the hell is that again?”).
Okay, so it’s still not perfect, but you’ll be shocked to find how much easier it is to follow Special Counsel Jack Smith’s account of what happened if you see the actual names rather than just their titles. (Not his fault! He was forced to use somebody else’s legal template.)
And finally, if you want a little more meat on the bare bones of what the document is talking about, I went through and researched online, providing access to the accusations by turning them into hyperlinks — and sometimes, to make it easier still, you’ll see something like [(search for... “yatta-yatta?”)] near a link, which is to help you find the words in “quotes” once you arrive at the linked site, especially if they’re not right up top.
(And, as I always recommend to anyone reading my “link-heavy” newsletter, I personally find it much easier to access links if you’re reading this on an actual computer rather than a cellphone, but that’s up to you.)
Also, be aware that ALL of the links in the text were provided by me. Otherwise, all my additions are in bold-type and in [brackets].
(In fact, the only word in bold-type that was NOT provided by me is the unbracketed word “treasonous” on page 24.)
By the way, if you’re a subscriber and getting this by email, I need to warn you that you will be cut off part way through, as the whole thing will not fit into one email, but as I remember, Substack gives you a chance to finish reading it on the online version by clicking some link, which you will need to search around for, maybe way the hell up top somewhere, I forget.
So, now back to more of the “introduction”.
According to an ABC/Ipsos poll taken later the same week as that quote,
... only about one-third of America agrees with Mr. Ramsey’s view that Trump should not have been charged — although roughly half of Americans believe he should have been.
On top of that, “a plurality of Americans (49%) said Trump should suspend his presidential campaign, while 36% said he shouldn't.”
Yet Mr. Ramsey, in my opinion, is just one of way too many Americans who seem to be missing the point of what’s been going on in America lately. If only they felt the need to look deeper, they might find that Trump is the one who is “dreaming stuff up”, not his critics.
In fact, we should all take as a measure of how “no longer able to read the room” Trump is these days by noticing how few of his followers — measured only in the dozens, at least in Atlanta — are answering Trump’s call to show up for his arrests.
And oddly, I suppose, just as they claim Biden personally ordered the DOJ to go after his campaign rival (and there is absolutely no evidence that he did), all those in his base seem to insist that this is all nothing but politics — that it’s the Democrats going after Trump instead of their country doing it!
Although maybe when we accuse all Republicans of playing the politics card, we’re committing the same gross miscalculation that Rudy Giuliani was after he and Trump experienced some serious pushback from Arizona’s Republican House Speaker, Rusty Bowers:
The former president asked him to hold a hearing to investigate allegations of fraud in Arizona …
"You are asking me to do something against my oath, and I will not break my oath," [Bowers] said he told Trump and Giuliani, to which the former New York mayor said: "Aren't we all Republicans here? I would think we'd get a better reception."
In fact, we should thank the many so-called “deep state” Republican patriots like Bowers, whose higher loyalties are to country rather than party, for the fact that our nation was rescued from the schemes of those whose allegiances were the other way around.
Along those same lines, how about some hats off to the American legal system:
“The Trump campaign keeps hoping it will find a judge that treats lawsuits like tweets,” said Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor and elections law expert, on Friday.
“Repeatedly, every person with a robe they’ve encountered has said, ‘I’m sorry, we do law here.’”
But anyone who assumes it’s just Democrats going after Trump, rather than the United States of America government doing it,
... needs to take notice that, while there seem to be countless prominent conservatives and Republicans (many who have quit their own party!) who have joined the government’s side in this legal battle, there don’t seem to be many, if even any, liberal Democrats who have abandoned their party to stand with Trump in Trump’s plot to steal back the White House. (Okay, maybe with the possible exception of Patrick Caddell, a now-deceased prominent Democrat who switched to Trump, but that was way back in 2016, which doesn’t count.)
And yet, while I can understand (and maybe even sympathize with) their belief that Trump seems to be the only conservative in modern times capable of ever defeating American Liberalism and bringing the country under the American Conservative principles they all hold dear, Trump also happens to be the only person in the 234 years our Constitution has been operational to ever come this close to toppling it.
But no, strangely, that’s not what he’s being charged with. Apparently they decided to give Trump a break by not going for the more serious offense.
What he is being charged with, in essence, is that, with the help from some like-minded co-conspirators, he has be trying to replace the Biden majority votes with his own votes of the minority — in essence, replacing President Biden with himself!
(But, Hey! Who amongst us wouldn’t want to do something like that?)
But there’s a term in French that describes what it is when someone “[targets] a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation's process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election”, especially for the purpose of replacing the legitimate leader with someone else; it is, according to Wikipedia, called a “coup d’état”.
But they also say this:
A self-coup is when a leader, having come to power through legal means, tries to stay in power through illegal means.
And in our particular case, those “illegal means” are demonstrated by the fact that Article Two of our Constitution, the 12thAmendment, and the Electoral Count Act of 1877 specifically lay out ground rules for how our president is chosen, and while they might not make things as specific as they should, in no way does the scam that Donald Trump and his eventually-feckless gang were hatching come even close to meeting the requirements of the rules.
If you happen to personally know anybody who, like Mr. Ramsey, are not the least bit interested in digging any deeper into how the “Democrats” have been dreaming up stuff in order to keep a “great man” from reclaiming his seat in the Oval office,
please do your country a favor by at least trying to persuade them to read the text of the indictment (see below).
(Oh, and by the way? Good luck with that.)
But in fact, I strongly suspect that those who end up voting for Trump, assuming that opportunity arises, will unlikely be doing it having withnessed any of Trump’s elusive “evidence” of election fraud, nor even by somehow swayed by Trump’s treasonous shenanigans, but will more likely be doing it for ideological reasons — which is to say, okay, Trump may be a scoundrel, but more importantly, he’s a conservative — and yeah, even better, one with such devil-may-care charisma! — which are all things so woefully lacking in that “Communist” Biden and all his “Socialist” Democrat pals!
Yet I do hope that anyone who ends up voting for Donald Trump understands that, in doing so, they may be helping return to power of the nation that spurned him, the only real criminal president it ever had, allowing him a second whack at inflicting whatever damage to it that he couldn’t quite have a chance to get to earlier.
THINGS I LEARNED WHILE RESEARCHING THIS:
Is Trump being charged with violating the Constitution?
No, he’s only being charged with violating a few of the laws in the US code that were passed to warn anyone what will happen to them if they do mess with the Constitution.
Doesn’t this indictment violate Trump’s first amendment rights of free speech?
Not at all. He can say anything he wants, but if it’s in the service of committing a crime such as fraud, then what he says can be used as evidence of his being guilty of committing that crime.
But, yes, our Constitution protects your right to say to the bank teller, “I strongly advise that you fill this bag with money”, but it won’t protect you from being tried in a court of law for what you’re doing while telling her that, which might sound to a jury like you were robbing a bank!
How can anyone prove that Trump isn’t actually correct in his opinion that he won the 2020 election?
Try this hypothetical: Was OJ Simpson guilty of murdering his ex-wife? What I mean is, “technically” and “under the law” — never mind what you may personally believe.
The answer is, no, he didn’t, because a jury found him not guilty. Otherwise, he would have been sent to prison for it.
Okay, but now, did he really do it?
Probably only Simpson knows that for sure, but all that the rest of us who weren’t there have to go by is what the law was able to determine under the processes it’s been given for deciding that.
Likewise, while Trump and friends had the right to “formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means” he had at his disposal, it’s only because he never presented enough evidence in the more than sixty court cases that there was “outcome-determinative fraud” in the election — which is to say, enough to change the outcome — that he’s not been working in the oval office anymore. (Okay, Trump did win one Pennsylvania case, but that was later reversed.)
Also worth remembering is, while Trump’s lawyers weren’t reluctant to claim election fraud in the media, one place you could count on them not saying what were what many have called “lies” was a court of law — where doing so might get them into serious professional ethical violations, which could easily have led them to be disbarred.
Okay, but since nobody can read his mind, how can it be proven without a doubt that Trump actually knew he lost the election?
As I understand it, Trump’s knowledge of whether he actually won or lost the election doesn’t, technically, have to be proven at all, much less without any doubt whatsoever, but to make their case, it might help the prosecution if they were able to convince a jury — and only “beyond a reasonable doubt”, at that — that he knew.
Does the Vice President, as President of the Senate, have the power to nullify any “fraudulent” electoral votes of states?
Nope.
This was one big source of confusion back in the election of 1876, so ten years later, with passage of the Electoral Count Act (and amended just last year), we tried to clarify, first of all, that the Senate President can’t decide anything but can only “administer” the rules given him; but also, clarify the assumption that the states are supposed to settle all their complicated electoral disputes ahead of time, before they send their slates to Washington.
But what if Trump really didn’t understand that he was attempting a coup?
Try this:
You drive 95 MPH in a 35 MPH zone. A cop pulls you over to ask you if you knew how fast you were going, and you say, “Oops! No, I had no idea I was breaking the speed limit, officer!”
Does he then say, “Oh!! Well, that’s different!! Next time, please pay more attention to the signs”?
No, what he says is, “Oh! Well, whether you knew it or not, you were!” — as he’s writing you a ticket. As Thomas Jefferson once said, ignorance of the law is no defense.
If Trump is found guilty of something in court, can they keep him from becoming president again?
Probably no, they can’t. The Constitution doesn’t bar him from serving, for one thing, and to make it do that would require changing or amending the Constitution.
But what about states passing laws to keep him off the ballot? According to Maggie Astor in the New York Times,
States could, in theory, try to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot by passing legislation requiring a clean criminal record, but this would be on legally shaky ground.
Worse still (in my opinion, of course) would be if he then got into the presidency after his conviction, he might be able to pardon himself (but only of federal charges) if the Supreme Court allows it, and then, according to Astor, “In the two federal cases, a likely outcome would be that a Trump-appointed attorney general would withdraw the charges.”
How about the Fourteenth Amendment’s insurrection clause, which some people are touting? Here’s from Bloomberg:
The provision bars a person from holding any office “under the United States” if the person has sworn an oath of allegiance to the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the government or “given aid to the enemies” of the U.S.
Does this provision apply to Trump? The first part certainly does: Trump took an oath to uphold the Constitution when he became president.
The trickier question is the second part: Has Trump’s conduct amounted to insurrection?
It might just be easier to invent a time machine, then go back to his second impeachment trial, let the Senate find him guilty, then vote to bar him from holding future federal office — which may be the only way to prevent him from running again.
Or more realistically, someday long after he’s gone, the country can take the time to fix all these flaws.
Can state legislatures just decide to overrule the popular vote and select electors themselves?
According to Adav Noti, who served for more than ten years in the Office of General Counsel of the Federal Election Commission?
Nope.
In short, Noti points out that, while state legislatures do have the constitutional authority to “determine that state’s manner of choosing its electors”, they’re only allowed to exercise that authority “in accordance with the laws of the State enacted prior to election day” — that is, they’re not allowed to wait until after the vote just to make sure results went the way they wanted them to, before choosing to change the rules of the game after the so-called game is over.
And it so happens that federal Election Day is on a day the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive right to determine, which Congress has already done by enacting a federal law designating it to be on the “Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November, in every even numbered year”.
And, per Noti, “Congress’s enactment of a uniform national Election Day under its own constitutional authority — which supersedes any contrary state actions — prohibits the choice of electors from being made based on elections held or laws passed after Election Day.”
What’s more, Noti says, “There is a second, independent reason state legislatures cannot cancel the popular vote results after Election Day: to do so would violate the Constitutional rights of the voters” — a violation, by the way, that Trump is already being charged under Count Four of this indictment.
And incidentally: It might be worth noticing that the law under Count Four, the “Conspiracy against rights” charge, is sometimes known as the “Ku Klux Klan Act” because it originated just after the Civil War, proposed at President Grant’s specific request in hopes of stopping the KKK from violently shutting down the legitimate votes of Black citizens. But, in fact, the law’s wording ends with this:
... and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section ... they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
Yep, you read that right: “... or may be sentenced to death”!
(Which reminds me, didn’t somebody die in the Capitol on January 6th?)
Thursday, August 31, 2023
SO, OFF WE GO! Enjoy the read!
Seriously, it’s like reading a true-crime novel! And it’s especially more fulfilling if you click on all the links.
And if you’re a slow reader like I am, you should prepare to allow a few days to finish it.
But that’s alright! Take your time! As of this writing, the trial is scheduled to begin no earlier than March 4 of 2024!
So here we go! See you on the other side!
CRIMINAL NO.
GRAND JURY ORIGINAL VIOLATIONS:
Count 1: 18 U.S.C. § 371 (Conspiracy to Defraud the United States)
Count 2: 18 U.S.C. § 1512(k) (Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding)
Count 3: 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(c)(2), 2 (Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding)
Count 4: 18 U.S.C. § 241 (Conspiracy Against Rights)
The Grand Jury charges that, at all times material to this Indictment, on or about the dates and at the approximate times stated below:
1. The Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, was the forty-fifth President of the United States and candidate for re-election in 2020. [Trump] lost the 2020 presidential election.
2. Despite having lost, [Trump] was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, [Trump] spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and [Trump] knew that they were false. But [Trump] repeated and widely
disseminated them anyway—to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.
3. [Trump] had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won. He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, [Trump] did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful.
4. Shortly after election day, [Trump] also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results. In so doing, [Trump] perpetrated three criminal conspiracies:
a. A conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371;
b. A conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified ("the certification proceeding"), in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(k); and
c. A conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one's vote counted, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241.
Each of these conspiracies—which built on the widespread mistrust [Trump] was creating through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud—targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation's process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election ("the federal government function").
5. The allegations contained in paragraphs 1 through 4 of this Indictment are re-alleged and fully incorporated here by reference.
6. From on or about November 14, 2020, through on or about January 20, 2021, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the Defendant,
did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with co-conspirators, known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government.
7. The purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the federal government function by which those results are collected, counted, and certified.
8. [Trump] enlisted co-conspirators to assist him in his criminal efforts to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and retain power. Among these were:
a. Co-Conspirator 1, [presumably Rudy Giuliani], an attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies that [Trump]'s 2020 re-election campaign attorneys would not.
b. Co-Conspirator 2, [presumably John Eastman], an attorney who devised and attempted to implement a strategy to leverage the Vice President's ceremonial role overseeing the
certification proceeding to obstruct the certification of the presidential election.
c. Co-Conspirator 3, [presumably Sidney Powell], an attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud [Trump] privately acknowledged to others sounded "crazy." Nonetheless, [Trump] embraced and publicly amplified [Powell]'s disinformation.
d. Co-Conspirator 4, [presumably Jeffery Clark], a Justice Department official who worked on civil matters and who, with [Trump], attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.
e. Co-Conspirator 5, [presumably Kenneth Chesebro], an attorney who assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.
f. Co-Conspirator 6, [not publicly known at this time, although the NY Times hints at (pay-wall alert!) Boris Epshteyn] a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.
9. The federal government function by which the results of the election for President of the United States are collected, counted, and certified was established through the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act (ECA), a federal law enacted in 1887. The Constitution provided that individuals called electors select the president, and that each state determine for itself how to appoint the electors apportioned to it. Through state laws, each of the fifty states and the District of Columbia chose to select their electors based on the popular vote in the state. After election day, the ECA required each state to formally determine—or "ascertain"—the electors who would represent the state's voters by casting electoral votes on behalf of the candidate who had won the popular vote, and required the executive of each state to certify to the federal government the identities of those electors. Then, on a date set by the ECA, each state's ascertained electors were required to meet and collect the results of the presidential election—that is, to cast electoral votes based on their state's popular vote, and to send their electoral votes, along with the state executive's
certification that they were the state's legitimate electors, to the United States Congress to be counted and certified in an official proceeding. Finally, the Constitution and ECA required that on the sixth of January following election day, the Congress meet in a Joint Session for a certification proceeding, presided over by the Vice President as President of the Senate, to count the electoral votes, resolve any objections, and announce the result—thus certifying the winner of the presidential election as president-elect. This federal government function—from the point of ascertainment to the certification—is foundational to the United States' democratic process, and until 2021, had operated in a peaceful and orderly manner for more than 130 years.
10. [Trump]'s conspiracy to impair, obstruct, and defeat the federal government function through dishonesty, fraud, and deceit included the following manner and means:
a. [Trump] and co-conspirators used knowingly false claims of election fraud to get state legislators and election officials to subvert the legitimate election results and change electoral votes for [Trump]'s opponent, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., to electoral votes for [Trump]. That is, on the pretext of baseless fraud claims, [Trump] pushed officials in certain states to ignore the popular vote; disenfranchise millions of voters; dismiss legitimate electors; and ultimately, cause the ascertainment of and voting by illegitimate electors in favor of [Trump].
b. [Trump] and co-conspirators organized fraudulent slates of electors in seven targeted states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), attempting to mimic the procedures that the legitimate electors were supposed to follow under the Constitution and other federal and state laws. This included causing the fraudulent electors to meet on the day appointed by federal law on which legitimate electors were to gather and cast their votes; cast fraudulent votes for [Trump]; and sign certificates falsely representing that they were legitimate electors. Some fraudulent electors were tricked into participating based on the understanding that their votes would be used only if [Trump] succeeded in outcome-determinative lawsuits within their state, which [Trump] never did. [Trump] and co-conspirators then caused these fraudulent electors to transmit their false certificates to the
Vice President and other government officials to be counted at the certification proceeding on January 6.
c. [Trump] and co-conspirators attempted to use the power and authority of the Justice Department to conduct sham election crime investigations and to send a letter to the targeted states that falsely claimed that the Justice Department had identified significant concerns that may have impacted the election outcome; that sought to advance [Trump]'s fraudulent elector plan by using the Justice Department's authority to falsely present the fraudulent electors as a valid alternative to the legitimate electors; and that urged, on behalf of the Justice Department, the targeted states' legislatures to convene to create the opportunity to choose the fraudulent electors over the legitimate electors.
d. [Trump] and co-conspirators attempted to enlist the Vice President [Mike Pence] to use his ceremonial role at the January 6 certification proceeding to fraudulently alter the election results. First, using knowingly false claims of election fraud, [Trump] and co-conspirators attempted to convince the Vice President to use [Trump]'s fraudulent electors, reject legitimate electoral votes, or send legitimate electoral votes to state legislatures for review rather than counting them. When that failed, on the morning of January 6, [Trump] and co-conspirators repeated knowingly false claims of election fraud to gathered supporters, falsely told them that the Vice President had the authority to and might alter the election results, and directed them to the Capitol to obstruct the certification proceeding and exert pressure on the Vice President to take the fraudulent actions he had previously refused.
e. After it became public on the afternoon of January 6 that the Vice President would not fraudulently alter the election results, a large and angry crowd— including many individuals whom [Trump] had deceived into believing the Vice President could and might change the election results— violently attacked the Capitol and halted the proceeding. As violence ensued, [Trump] and co-conspirators exploited the disruption by redoubling efforts to levy false claims of election fraud and convince Members of Congress to further delay the certification based on those claims.
11. [Trump], his co-conspirators, and their agents made knowingly false claims that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the 2020 presidential election. These prolific
lies about election fraud included dozens of specific claims that there had been substantial fraud in certain states, such as that large numbers of dead, non-resident, non-citizen, or otherwise ineligible voters had cast ballots, or that [(pay-wall alert!)] voting machines had changed votes for [Trump] to votes for Biden. These claims were false, and [Trump] knew that they were false. In fact, [Trump] was notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue—often by the people on whom he relied for candid advice on important matters, and who were best positioned to know the facts— and he deliberately disregarded the truth. For instance:
a. [Trump]'s Vice President [Mike Pence]—who personally stood to gain by remaining in office as part of [Trump]'s ticket and whom [Trump] asked to study fraud allegations—told [Trump] that he had seen no evidence of outcome-determinative fraud.
b. The senior leaders of the Justice Department [Bill Barr, Jeffrey Rosen, Richard Donoghue]—appointed by [Trump] and responsible for investigating credible allegations of election crimes— told [Trump] on multiple occasions that various allegations of fraud were unsupported.
c. The Director of National Intelligence [John Ratcliffe]—[Trump]'s principal advisor on intelligence matters related to national security—disabused [Trump] of the notion that the Intelligence Community's findings regarding foreign interference would change the outcome of the election.
d. The Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency ("CISA") [Chris Krebs]—whose existence [Trump] signed into law to protect the nation's cybersecurity infrastructure from attack—joined an official multi-agency statement that there was no evidence any voting system had been compromised and that declared the 2020 election "the most secure in American history." Days later, after the CISA Director—whom [Trump] had appointed—announced publicly that election security experts were in agreement that claims of computer-based election fraud were unsubstantiated, [Trump] fired him.
e. Senior White House attorneys [Pat Cipollone, others]—selected by [Trump] to provide him candid advice—informed [Trump] that there was no evidence of outcome-determinative election fraud, and told him that his presidency would end on Inauguration Day in 2021.
f. Senior staffers on [Trump]'s 2020 re-election campaign ("Defendant's Campaign" or "Campaign") [Bill Stepien]—whose sole mission was [Trump]'s re-election—told [Trump] on November 7, 2020, that he had only a five to ten percent chance of prevailing in the election, and that success was contingent on [Trump] winning ongoing vote counts or litigation in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. Within a week of that assessment, [Trump] lost in Arizona—meaning he had lost the election.
g. State legislators and officials [Mike Shirkey and Lee Chatfield of Michigan, Rusty Bowers of Arizona, Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling and Brian Kemp and Geoff Duncan of Georgia, and many more]—many of whom were [Trump]'s political allies, had voted for him, and wanted him to be re-elected— repeatedly informed [Trump] that his claims of fraud in their states were unsubstantiated or false and resisted his pressure to act based upon them.
h. State and federal courts—the neutral arbiters responsible for ensuring the fair and even-handed administration of election laws—rejected every outcome-determinative post-election lawsuit filed by [Trump], his co-conspirators, and allies, providing [Trump] real-time notice that his allegations were meritless.
12. [Trump] widely disseminated his false claims of election fraud for months, despite the fact that he knew, and in many cases had been informed directly, that they were not true. [Trump]'s knowingly false statements were integral to his criminal plans to defeat the federal government function, obstruct the certification, and interfere with others' right to vote and have their votes counted. He made these knowingly false claims throughout the post-election time period, including those below that he made immediately before the attack on the Capitol on January 6:
a. [Trump] insinuated that more than ten thousand dead voters had voted in Georgia. Just four days earlier, Georgia's Secretary of State had explained to [Trump] [(pay-wall alert!)] that this was false.
b. [Trump] asserted that there had been 205,000 more votes than voters in Pennsylvania. [Trump]'s Acting Attorney General [Jeffrey Rosen] and Acting Deputy Attorney General [Richard Donoghue] had explained to him that this was false.
c. [Trump] said that there had been a suspicious vote dump in Detroit, Michigan. [Trump]'s Attorney General had explained to [Trump] that this was false, and [Trump]'s allies in the Michigan
state legislature—the Speaker of the House of Representatives and Majority Leader of the Senate—had publicly announced that there was no evidence of substantial fraud in the state.
d. [Trump] claimed that there had been tens of thousands of double votes and other fraud in Nevada. The Nevada Secretary of State [Barbara Cegavske] had previously rebutted [Trump]'s fraud claims by publicly posting a "Facts vs. Myths" document explaining that Nevada judges had reviewed and rejected them, and the Nevada Supreme Court had rendered a decision denying such claims.
e. [Trump] said that more than 30,000 non-citizens had voted in Arizona. [Trump]'s own Campaign Manager [Bill Stepien] had explained to him that such claims were false, and the Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives [Rusty Bowers] who had supported [Trump] in the election, had issued a public statement that there was no evidence of substantial fraud in Arizona.
f. [Trump] asserted that voting machines in various contested states had switched votes from [Trump] to Biden. [Trump]'s Attorney General [Bill Barr], Acting Attorney General [Jeffrey Rosen], and Acting Deputy Attorney General [Richard Donoghue] all had explained to him that this was false, and numerous recounts and audits had confirmed the accuracy of voting machines.
13. Shortly after election day—which fell on November 3, 2020—[Trump] launched his criminal scheme. On November 13, [Trump]'s Campaign attorneys [Kory Langhofer] conceded in court that he had lost the vote count in the state of Arizona—meaning, based on the assessment [Trump]'s Campaign advisors had given him just a week earlier, [Trump] had lost the election. So the next day, [Trump] turned to [Rudy Giuliani], whom he announced would spearhead his efforts going forward to challenge the election results. From that point on, [Trump] and his co-conspirators executed a strategy to use knowing deceit in the targeted states to impair, obstruct, and defeat the federal government function, including as described below.
14. On November 13, 2020, [Trump] had a conversation with his Campaign Manager [Bill Stepien], who informed him that a claim that had been circulating, that a substantial number of non-citizens had voted in Arizona, was false.
15. On November 22, eight days before Arizona's Governor certified the ascertainment of the state's legitimate electors based on the popular vote, [Trump] and [Rudy Giuliani] called the Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives [Rusty Bowers] and made knowingly false claims of election fraud aimed at interfering with the ascertainment of and voting by Arizona's electors, as follows:
a. [Trump] and [Rudy Giuliani] falsely asserted, among other things, that a substantial number of non-citizens, non-residents, and dead people had voted fraudulently in Arizona. [Bowers] asked [Giuliani] for evidence of the claims, which [Giuliani] did not have, but claimed he would provide. [Giuliani] never did so.
b. [Trump] and [Giuliani] asked [Bowers] to call the legislature into session to hold a hearing based on their claims of election fraud. [Bowers] refused, stating that doing so would require a two-thirds vote of its members, and he would not allow it without actual evidence of fraud.
c. [Trump] and [Giuliani] asked [Bowers] to use the legislature to circumvent the process by which legitimate electors would be ascertained for Biden based on the popular vote, and replace those electors with a new slate for [Trump]. [Bowers] refused, responding that the suggestion was beyond anything he had ever heard or thought of as something within his authority.
16. On December 1, [Rudy Giuliani] met with [Rusty Bowers]. [Bowers] again asked [Giuliani] for evidence of the outcome-determinative election fraud he and [Trump] had been claiming, [Giuliani] responded with words to the effect of, "We don't have the evidence, but we have lots of theories."
17. On December 4, the Arizona House Speaker [Rusty Bowers] issued a public statement that said, in part:
No election is perfect, and if there were evidence of illegal votes or an improper count, then Arizona law provides a process to contest the election: a lawsuit under state law. But the law does not authorize the Legislature to reverse the results of an election.
As a conservative Republican, I don't like the results of the presidential election. I voted for President Trump and worked hard to reelect him. But I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.
I and my fellow legislators swore an oath to support the U.S. Constitution and the constitution and laws of the state of Arizona. It would violate that oath, the basic principles of republican government, and the rule of law if we attempted to nullify the people's vote based on unsupported theories of fraud. Under the laws that we wrote and voted upon, Arizona voters choose who wins, and our system requires that their choice be respected.
18. On the morning of January 4, 2021, [John Eastman] called the Arizona House Speaker [Rusty Bowers] to urge him to use a majority of the legislature to decertify the state's legitimate electors. Arizona's validly ascertained electors had voted three weeks earlier and sent their votes to Congress, which was scheduled to count those votes in Biden's favor in just two days' time at the January 6 certification proceeding. When [Bowers] explained that state investigations had uncovered no evidence of substantial fraud in the state, [Eastman] conceded that he "[didn't] know enough about facts on the ground" in Arizona, but nonetheless told the Arizona House Speaker to decertify and "let the courts sort it out." [Bowers] refused, stating that he would not "play with the oath" he had taken to uphold the United States Constitution and Arizona law.
19. On January 6, [Trump] publicly repeated the knowingly false claim that 36,000 non-citizens had voted in Arizona.
20. On November 16, 2020, on [Trump]'s behalf, his executive assistant [Molly Michael] sent [Sidney Powell] and others a document containing bullet points critical of a certain voting machine company, writing, "See attached - Please include as is, or almost as is, in lawsuit." [Powell] responded nine minutes later, writing, "IT MUST GO IN ALL SUITS IN GA AND PA IMMEDIATELY WITH A FRAUD CLAIM THAT REQUIRES THE ENTIRE ELECTION TO BE SET ASIDE in those states and machines impounded for non-partisan professional inspection." On November 25, [Powell] filed a lawsuit against the Governor of Georgia falsely alleging "massive election fraud" accomplished through the voting machine company's election software and hardware. Before the lawsuit was even filed, [Trump] retweeted a post promoting it. [Trump] did this despite the fact that when he had discussed [Powell]'s far-fetched public claims regarding the voting machine company in private with advisors, [Trump] had conceded that they were unsupported and that [Powell] sounded "crazy." [Powell]'s Georgia lawsuit was dismissed on December 7.
21. On December 3, [Rudy Giuliani] orchestrated a presentation to a Judiciary Subcommittee of the Georgia State Senate, with the intention of misleading state senators into blocking the ascertainment of legitimate electors. During the presentation:
a. An agent of [Trump] and [Rudy Giuliani] falsely claimed that more than 10,000 dead people voted in Georgia. That afternoon, a Senior Advisor [Eric Herschmann?] to [Trump] told [Trump]'s Chief of Staff [Mark Meadows] through text messages, "Just an FYI . [A Campaign lawyer] and his team verified that the 10k+ supposed dead people voting in GA is not accurate. . . . It was alleged in [Giuliani]’s hearing today." The Senior Advisor [Eric Herschmann?] clarified that he believed that the actual number was 12.
b. Another agent of [Trump] and [Giuliani] played a misleading excerpt of a video recording of ballot-counting at State Farm Arena in Atlanta and insinuated that it showed election workers counting "suitcases" of illegal ballots.
c. [John Eastman] encouraged the legislators to decertify the state's legitimate electors based on false allegations of election fraud.
22. Also on December 3, [Trump] issued a Tweet amplifying the knowingly false claims made in [Rudy Giuliani]'s presentation in Georgia: "Wow! Blockbuster testimony taking place right now in Georgia. Ballot stuffing by Dems when Republicans were forced to leave the large counting room. Plenty more coming, but this alone leads to an easy win of the State!"
23. On December 4, the Georgia Secretary of State's Chief Operating Officer [Gabriel Sterling] debunked the claims made at [Rudy Giuliani]'s presentation the previous day, issuing a Tweet stating, "The 90 second video of election workers at State Farm arena, purporting to show fraud was watched in its entirety (hours) by @GaSecofState investigators. Shows normal ballot processing. Here is the fact check on it." On December 7, he reiterated during a press conference that the claim that there had been misconduct at State Farm Arena was false.
24. On December 8, [Trump] called the Georgia Attorney General [Chris Carr] to pressure him to support an election lawsuit filed in the Supreme Court by another state's attorney general. [Carr] told [Trump] that officials had investigated various claims of election fraud in the state and were not seeing evidence to support them.
25. Also on December 8, a Senior Campaign Advisor [said by some to be Jason Miller]—who spoke with [Trump] on a daily basis and had informed him on multiple occasions that various fraud claims were untrue—expressed frustration that many of [Rudy Giuliani] and his legal team's claims could not be substantiated. As early as mid-November, for instance, [Miller] had informed [Trump] that his claims of a large number of dead voters in Georgia were untrue. With respect to the persistent false claim regarding State Farm Arena, on December 8, [Miller] wrote in an email, "When our research and campaign legal team can't back up any of the claims made by our Elite Strike Force Legal Team, you can see why we're 0-32 on our
cases. I'll obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it's tough to own any of this when it's all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership."
26. On December 10, four days before Biden's validly ascertained electors were scheduled to cast votes and send them to Congress, [Rudy Giuliani] appeared at a hearing before the Georgia House of Representatives' Government Affairs Committee. [Giuliani] played the State Farm Arena video again, and falsely claimed that it showed "voter fraud right in front of people's eyes" and was "the tip of the iceberg." Then, he cited two election workers by name, baselessly accused them of "quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they are vials of heroin or cocaine," and [(pay-wall alert!)] suggested that they were criminals whose "places of work, their homes, should have been searched for evidence of ballots, for evidence of USB ports, for evidence of voter fraud." Thereafter, the two election workers received numerous death threats.
27. On December 15, [Trump] summoned the incoming Acting Attorney General [Jeffrey Rosen], the incoming Acting Deputy Attorney General [Richard Donoghue], and others to the Oval Office to discuss allegations of election fraud. During the meeting, the Justice Department officials specifically refuted [Trump]'s claims about State Farm Arena, explaining to him that the activity shown on the tape [Rudy Giuliani] had used was "benign."
28. On December 23, a day after [Trump]'s Chief of Staff [Mark Meadows] [(search for “Meadows”)] personally observed the signature verification process at the Cobb County Civic Center and notified [Trump] that state election officials were "conducting themselves in an exemplary fashion" and would find fraud if it existed [(search for “exemplary”)] [Trump] tweeted that the Georgia officials administering the signature verification process were trying to hide evidence of election fraud and were "[t]errible people!” [(search for “people”)]
29. In a phone call on December 27, [Trump] spoke with the Acting Attorney General [Jeffrey Rosen] and Acting Deputy Attorney General [Richard Donoghue]. During the call, [Trump] again pressed the
unfounded claims regarding State Farm Arena, and the two top Justice Department officials again rebutted the allegations, telling him that the Justice Department had reviewed videotape and interviewed witnesses, and had not identified any suspicious conduct.
30. On December 31, [Trump] signed a verification affirming false election fraud allegations made on his behalf in a lawsuit filed in his name against the Georgia Governor. In advance of the filing, [John Eastman]—who was advising [Trump] on the lawsuit— acknowledged in an email that he and [Trump] had, since signing a previous verification, "been made aware that some of the allegations (and evidence proffered by the experts) has been inaccurate" and that signing a new affirmation "with that knowledge (and incorporation by reference) would not be accurate." [Trump] and [Eastman] caused [Trump]'s signed verification to be filed nonetheless.
31. On January 2, four days before Congress's certification proceeding, [Trump] and others called Georgia's Secretary of State [Brad Raffensperger]. During the call, [Trump] lied to [Raffensperger] to induce him to alter Georgia's popular vote count and call into question the validity of the Biden electors' votes, which had been transmitted to Congress weeks before, including as follows:
a. [Trump] raised allegations regarding the State Farm Arena video and repeatedly disparaged one of the same election workers that [Rudy Giuliani] had maligned on December 10, using her name almost twenty times and falsely referring to her as "a professional vote scammer and hustler." In response, [Raffensperger] refuted this: "You're talking about the State Farm video. And I think it's extremely unfortunate that [[Giuliani]] or his people, they sliced and diced that video and took it out of context." When [Raffensperger] then offered a link to a video that would disprove [Giuliani]'s claims, [Trump] responded, "I don't care about a link, I don't need it. I have a much, [Brad], I have a much better link."
b. [Trump] asked about rumors that paper ballots cast in the election were being destroyed, and the Georgia Secretary of State's Counsel [Ryan Germany] explained to him that the claim had been investigated and was not true.
c. [Trump] claimed that 5,000 dead people voted in Georgia, causing the Georgia Secretary of State [Raffensperger] to respond, "Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong.... The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted. And so [your information]'s wrong, that was two."
d. [Trump] claimed that thousands of out-of-state voters had cast ballots in Georgia's election, which [Ryan Germany] refuted, explaining, "We've been going through each of those as well, and those numbers that we got, that [Defendant's counsel [Cleta Mitchell]] was just saying, they're not accurate. Every one we've been through are people that lived in Georgia, moved to a different state, but then moved back to Georgia legitimately . . . they moved back in years ago. This was not like something just before the election."
e. In response to multiple other of [Trump]'s allegations, [Ryan Germany] told [Trump] that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was examining all such claims and finding no merit to them.
f. [Trump] said that he needed to "find" 11,780 votes, and insinuated that the Georgia Secretary of State and his Counsel could be subject to criminal prosecution if they failed to find election fraud as he demanded, stating, "And you are going to find that they are—which is totally illegal— it's, it's, it's more illegal for you than it is for them because you know what they did and you're not reporting it. That's a criminal, you know, that's a criminal offense. And you know, you can't let that happen. That's a big risk to you and to [[Ryan]], your lawyer."
32. The next day, on January 3, [Trump] falsely claimed that the Georgia Secretary of State had not addressed [Trump]'s allegations, publicly stating that the Georgia Secretary of State "was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the 'ballots under table' scam, ballot destruction, out of state 'voters', dead voters, and more. He has no clue!"
33. On January 6, [Trump] publicly repeated the knowingly false insinuation that more than 10,300 dead people had voted in Georgia [(search for “10,300”)].
34. On November 5, 2020, [Trump] claimed that there had been a suspicious dump of votes—purportedly illegitimate ballots—stating, "In Detroit, there were hours of unexplained delay in delivering many of the votes for counting. The final batch did not arrive until four in the morning and—even though the polls closed at eight o'clock. So they brought it in, and the batches came in, and nobody knew where they came from."
35. On November 20, three days before Michigan's Governor signed a certificate of ascertainment notifying the federal government that, based on the popular vote, Biden's electors were to represent Michigan's voters, [Trump] held a meeting in the Oval Office with the Speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives [Lee Chatfield] and the Majority Leader of the Michigan Senate [Mike Shirkey]. In the meeting, [Trump] raised his false claim, among others, of an illegitimate vote dump in Detroit. In response, the Michigan Senate Majority Leader [Shirkey] told [Trump] that he had lost Michigan not because of fraud, but because [Trump] had underperformed with certain voter populations in the state. Upon leaving their meeting, the Michigan House Speaker and Michigan Senate Majority Leader issued a statement reiterating this:
The Senate and House Oversight Committees are actively engaged in a thorough review of Michigan's elections process and we have faith in the committee process to provide greater transparency and accountability to our citizens. We have not yet been made aware of any information that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan and as legislative leaders, we will follow the law and follow the normal process regarding Michigan's electors, just as we have said throughout this election.
36. On December 1, [Trump] raised his Michigan vote dump claim with the Attorney General [Dana Nessel] [(search for “Nessel”)], who responded that what had occurred in Michigan had been the normal vote-counting process and that there was no indication of fraud in Detroit.
37. Despite this, the next day, [Trump] made a knowingly false statement that in Michigan, "[a]t 6:31 in the morning, a vote dump of 149,772 votes came in unexpectedly. We were winning by a lot. That batch was received in horror. Nobody knows anything about it. . . . It's corrupt. Detroit is corrupt. I have a lot of friends in Detroit. They know it. But Detroit is totally corrupt."
38. On December 4, [Rudy Giuliani] sent a text message to the Michigan House Speaker [Lee Chatfield] [(search for “Dec. 4”)] reiterating his unsupported claim of election fraud and attempting to get [Chatfield] to assist in reversing the ascertainment of the legitimate Biden electors, stating, "Looks like Georgia may well hold some factual hearings and change the certification under Art II sec 1 cl 2 of the Constitution. As [[John Eastman]] explained they don't just have the right to do it but the obligation. . . . Help me get this done in Michigan."
39. Similarly, on December 7, despite still having established no fraud in Michigan, [Rudy Giuliani] sent a text intended for the Michigan Senate Majority Leader [Shirkey]: "So I need you to pass a joint resolution from the Michigan legislature that states that, * the election is in dispute, * there's an ongoing investigation by the Legislature, and * the Electors sent by Governor Whitmer are not the official Electors of the State of Michigan and do not fall within the Safe Harbor deadline of Dec 8 under Michigan law."
40. On December 14—the day that electors in states across the country were required to vote and submit their votes to Congress—the Michigan House Speaker [Lee Chatfield] and Michigan Senate Majority Leader [Mike Shirkey] announced that, contrary to [Trump]'s requests, they would not decertify the legitimate election results or electors in Michigan. The Michigan Senate Majority Leader's public statement included, "[W]e have not received evidence of fraud on a scale that would change
the outcome of the election in Michigan." The Michigan House Speaker's [Chatfield] public statement read, in part:
We've diligently examined these reports of fraud to the best of our ability. . . .
. . . I fought hard for President Trump. Nobody wanted him to win more than me. I think he's done an incredible job. But I love our republic, too. I can't fathom risking our norms, traditions and institutions to pass a resolution retroactively changing the electors for Trump, simply because some think there may have been enough widespread fraud to give him the win. That's unprecedented for good reason. And that's why there is not enough support in the House to cast a new slate of electors. I fear we'd lose our country forever. This truly would bring mutually assured destruction for every future election in regards to the Electoral College. And I can't stand for that. I won't.
41. On January 6, 2021, [Trump] publicly repeated his knowingly false claim regarding an illicit dump of more than a hundred thousand ballots in Detroit.
42. On November 11, 2020, [Trump] publicly maligned a Philadelphia City Commissioner for stating on the news that there was no evidence of widespread fraud in Philadelphia. As a result, the Philadelphia City Commissioner and his family received death threats.
43. On November 25, the day after Pennsylvania's Governor [Tom Wolf] signed a certificate of ascertainment and thus certified to the federal government that Biden's electors were the legitimate electors for the state, [Rudy Giuliani] orchestrated an event at a hotel in Gettysburg attended by state legislators. [Giuliani] falsely claimed that Pennsylvania had issued 1.8 million absentee ballots and received 2.5 million in return. In the days thereafter, a Campaign staffer [unknown at this writing] wrote internally that [Giuliani]'s allegation was "just wrong" and "[t]here's no way to defend it."
The Deputy Campaign Manager [according to Washington Post's Josh Dawsey, it was Justin Clark] responded, "We have been saying this for a while. It's very frustrating."
44. On December 4, after four Republican leaders of the Pennsylvania legislature issued a public statement that the General Assembly lacked the authority to overturn the popular vote and appoint its own slate of electors, and that doing so would violate the state Election Code and Constitution, [Trump] re-tweeted a [Bernard Kerik] post labeling the legislators cowards.
45. On December 31 and January 3, [Trump] repeatedly raised with the Acting Attorney General [Jeffrey Rosen] and Acting Deputy Attorney General [Richard Donoghue] the allegation that in Pennsylvania, there had been 205,000 more votes than voters. Each time, the Justice Department officials informed [Trump] that his claim was false.
46. On January 6, 2021, [Trump] publicly repeated his knowingly false claim that there had been 205,000 more votes than voters in Pennsylvania.
47. On November 29,2020, a recount in Wisconsin that [Trump]'s Campaign had petitioned and paid for did not change the election result, and in fact increased [Trump]'s margin of defeat.
48. On December 14, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected an election challenge by the Campaign. One Justice wrote, "[N]othing in this case casts any legitimate doubt that the people of Wisconsin lawfully chose Vice President Biden and Senator Harris to be the next leaders of our great country."
49. On December 21, as a result of the state Supreme Court's decision, the Wisconsin Governor [Tony Evers]—who had signed a certificate of ascertainment on November 30 identifying Biden's electors as the state's legitimate electors—signed a certificate of final determination in which he
recognized that the state Supreme Court had resolved a controversy regarding the appointment of Biden's electors, and confirmed that Biden had received the highest number of votes in the state and that his electors were the state's legitimate electors.
50. That same day, in response to the court decision that had prompted the Wisconsin Governor to sign a certificate of final determination, [Trump] issued a Tweet repeating his knowingly false claim of election fraud and demanding that the Wisconsin legislature overturn the election results that had led to the ascertainment of Biden's electors as the legitimate electors.
51. On December 27, [Trump] raised with the Acting Attorney General [Jeffrey Rosen] and Acting Deputy Attorney General [Jeffrey Rosen] a specific fraud claim—that there had been more votes than voters in Wisconsin. [Rosen] informed [Trump] that the claim was false.
52. On January 6, 2021, [Trump] publicly repeated knowingly false claims that there had been tens of thousands of unlawful votes in Wisconsin.
53. As [Trump]'s attempts to obstruct the electoral vote through deceit of state officials met with repeated failure, beginning in early December 2020, he and co-conspirators developed a new plan: to marshal individuals who would have served as [Trump]'s electors, had he won the popular vote, in seven targeted states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—and cause those individuals to make and send to the Vice President and Congress false certifications that they were legitimate electors. Under the plan, the submission of these fraudulent slates would create a fake controversy at the certification proceeding and position the Vice President—presiding on January 6 as President of the Senate—
to supplant legitimate electors with [Trump]'s fake electors and certify [Trump] as president.
54. The plan capitalized on ideas presented in memoranda drafted by [Kenneth Chesebro], an attorney who was assisting [Trump]'s Campaign with legal efforts related to a recount in Wisconsin. The memoranda evolved over time from a legal strategy to preserve [Trump]'s rights to a corrupt plan to subvert the federal government function by stopping Biden electors' votes from being counted and certified, as follows:
a. The November 18 Memorandum ("Wisconsin Memo") advocated that, because of the ongoing recount in Wisconsin, [Trump]'s electors there should meet and cast votes on December 14—the date the ECA required appointed electors to vote—to preserve the alternative of [Trump]'s Wisconsin elector slate in the event [Trump] ultimately prevailed in the state.
b. The December 6 Memorandum ("Fraudulent Elector Memo") marked a sharp departure from [Kenneth Chesebro]'s Wisconsin Memo, advocating that the alternate electors originally conceived of to preserve rights in Wisconsin instead be used in a number of states as fraudulent electors to prevent Biden from receiving the 270 electoral votes necessary to secure the presidency on January 6. The Fraudulent Elector Memo suggested that [Trump]'s electors in six purportedly "contested" states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) should meet and mimic as best as possible the actions of the legitimate Biden electors, and that on January 6, the Vice President [Mike Pence] should open and count the fraudulent votes, setting up a fake controversy that would derail the proper certification of Biden as president-elect.
c. The December 9 Memorandum ("Fraudulent Elector Instructions") consisted of [Kenneth Chesebro]'s instructions on how fraudulent electors could mimic legitimate electors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. [Chesebro] noted that in some states, it would be virtually impossible for the fraudulent electors to successfully take the same steps as the legitimate electors because state law required formal participation in the process by state officials, or access to official resources.
55. The plan began in early December, and ultimately, the conspirators and [Trump]'s Campaign took the Wisconsin Memo and expanded it to any state that [Trump] claimed was "contested"—even New Mexico, which [Trump] had lost by more than ten percent of the popular vote. This expansion was forecast by emails [Trump]'s Chief of Staff [Mark Meadows] sent on December 6, forwarding the Wisconsin Memo to Campaign staff and writing, "We just need to have someone coordinating the electors for states." [(search for “we just need”)]
56. On December 6, [Trump] and [John Eastman] called the Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee [Ronna McDaniel] to ensure that the plan was in motion. During the call, [Eastman] told the Chairwoman that it was important for the RNC to help [Trump]'s Campaign gather electors in targeted states, and falsely represented to her that such electors' votes would be used only if ongoing litigation in one of the states changed the results in [Trump]'s favor. After [McDaniel] consulted the Campaign and heard that work on gathering electors was underway, she called and reported this information to [Trump], who responded approvingly.
57. On December 7, [Rudy Giuliani] received the Wisconsin Memo and the Fraudulent Elector Memo. [Giuliani] spoke with Co-Conspirator 6 [Epshteyn?] regarding attorneys who could assist in the fraudulent elector effort in the targeted states, and he received from Co-Conspirator 6 an email identifying attorneys in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
58. The next day, on December 8, [Kenneth Chesebro] called the Arizona attorney on Co-Conspirator 6's [who, per NYTimes, is Boris Epshteyn] list. In an email [to Epshteyn, according to the NYTimes] after the call, the Arizona attorney [also per NYTimes; it was Jack Wilenchik] [(search for “Jack Wilenchik”)] recounted his conversation with [Chesebro] as follows:
I just talked to the gentleman who did that memo, [Kenneth Chesebro]. His idea is basically that all of us (GA, WI, AZ, PA,
etc.) have our electors send in their votes (even though the votes aren't legal under federal law -- because they're not signed by the Governor); so that members of Congress can fight about whether they should be counted on January 6th. (They could potentially argue that they're not bound by federal law because they're Congress and make the law, etc.) Kind of wild/creative -- I'm happy to discuss. My comment to him was that I guess there's no harm in it, (legally at least) -- i.e. we would just be sending in "fake" electoral votes to Pence so that "someone" in Congress can make an objection when they start counting votes, and start arguing that the "fake" votes should be counted.
59. At [Rudy Giuliani]'s direction, on December 10, [Kenneth Chesebro] sent to points of contact in all targeted states except Wisconsin (which had already received his memos) and New Mexico a streamlined version of the Wisconsin Memo—which did not reveal the intended fraudulent use of [Trump]'s electors—and the Fraudulent Elector Instructions, along with fraudulent elector certificates that he had drafted.
60. The next day, on December 11, through [Kenneth Chesebro], [Rudy Giuliani] suggested that the Arizona lawyer [Jack Wilenchik, with Chairperson of the Arizona GOP Kelli Ward as petitioner] file a petition for certiorari in the Supreme Court as a pretext to claim that litigation was pending in the state, to provide cover for the convening and voting of [Trump]'s fraudulent electors there. [Chesebro] explained that [Giuliani] had heard from a state official and state provisional elector that "it could appear treasonous [emphasis in the original] for the AZ electors to vote on Monday if there is no pending court proceeding . . . ."
61. To manage the plan in Pennsylvania, on December 12, [Rudy Giuliani], [Kenneth Chesebro], and Co-Conspirator 6 [Boris Epshteyn?] participated in a conference call organized by [Trump]'s Campaign with [Trump]'s electors in that state. When [Trump]'s electors [e.g., Charlie Gerow] expressed concern about signing certificates representing themselves as legitimate electors, [Giuliani] falsely assured them that their certificates would be used only if [Trump] succeeded in litigation. Subsequently, Co-Conspirator 6 [Epshteyn?] circulated proposed conditional language to that effect
for potential inclusion in the fraudulent elector certificates. A Campaign official cautioned not to offer the conditional language to other states because "[t]he other States are signing what he prepared - if it gets out we changed the language for PA it could snowball." In some cases, [Trump]'s electors refused to participate in the plan.
62. On December 13, [Kenneth Chesebro] sent [Rudy Giuliani] an email memorandum that further confirmed that the conspirators' plan was not to use the fraudulent electors only in the circumstance that [Trump]'s litigation was successful in one of the targeted states—instead, the plan was to falsely present the fraudulent slates as an alternative to the legitimate slates at Congress's certification proceeding.
63. On December 13, [Trump] asked the Senior Campaign Advisor [Jason Miller] for an update on "what was going on" with the elector plan and directed him to "put out [a] statement on electors." As a result, [Rudy Giuliani] directed [Miller] to join a conference call with him, Co-Conspirator 6 [Epshteyn?], and others. When [Miller] related these developments in text messages to the Deputy Campaign Manager [Justin Clark], a Senior Advisor [Eric Herschmann?] to [Trump], and a Campaign staffer, [Clark] responded, "Here's the thing the way this has morphed it's a crazy play so I don't know who wants to put their name on it." [Miller] wrote, "Certifying illegal votes." In turn, the participants in the group text message refused to have a statement regarding electors attributed to their names because none of them could "stand by it."
64. Also on December 13, at a Campaign staffer's request, [Kenneth Chesebro] drafted and sent fraudulent elector certificates for [Trump]'s electors in New Mexico, which had not previously been among the targeted states, and where there was no pending litigation on [Trump]'s behalf. The next day, [Trump]'s Campaign filed an election challenge suit in
New Mexico at 11:54 a.m., six minutes before the noon deadline for the electors' votes, as a pretext so that there was pending litigation there at the time the fraudulent electors voted.
65. On December 14, the legitimate electors of all 50 states and the District of Columbia met in their respective jurisdictions to formally cast their votes for president, resulting in a total of 232 electoral votes for [Trump] and 306 for Biden. The legitimate electoral votes that Biden won in the states that [Trump] targeted, and [Trump]'s margin of defeat, were as follows: Arizona (11 electoral votes; 10,457 votes), Georgia (16 electoral votes; 11,779 votes), Michigan (16 electoral votes; 154,188 votes), Nevada (6 electoral votes; 33,596 votes), New Mexico (5 electoral votes; 99,720 votes), Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes; 80,555 votes), and Wisconsin (10 electoral votes; 20,682 votes).
66. On the same day, at the direction of [Trump] and [Rudy Giuliani], fraudulent electors convened sham proceedings in the seven targeted states to cast fraudulent electoral ballots in favor of [Trump]. In some states, in order to satisfy legal requirements set forth for legitimate electors under state law, state officials were enlisted to provide the fraudulent electors access to state capitol buildings so that they could gather and vote there. In many cases, however, as [Kenneth Chesebro] had predicted in the Fraudulent Elector Instructions, the fraudulent electors were unable to satisfy the legal requirements.
67. Nonetheless, as directed in the Fraudulent Elector Instructions, shortly after the fraudulent electors met on December 14, the targeted states' fraudulent elector certificates were mailed to the President of the Senate, the Archivist of the United States, and others. [Trump] and co-conspirators ultimately used the certificates of these fraudulent electors to deceitfully target the government function, and did so contrary to how fraudulent electors were told they would be used.
68. Unlike those of the fraudulent electors, consistent with the ECA, the legitimate electors' signed certificates were annexed to the state executives' certificates of ascertainment before being sent to the President of the Senate and others.
69. That evening, at 6:26 p.m., the RNC Chairwoman forwarded to [Trump], through his executive assistant [Molly Michael] [(search for “Molly”)], an email titled, "Electors Recap - Final," which represented that in "Six Contested States"—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin— [Trump]'s electors had voted in parallel to Biden's electors. [Trump]'s executive assistant [Michael] responded, "It's in front of him!"
70. In late December 2020, [Trump] attempted to use the Justice Department to make knowingly false claims of election fraud to officials in the targeted states through a formal letter under the Acting Attorney General's [Jeffrey Rosen] signature, thus giving [Trump]'s lies the backing of the federal government and attempting to improperly influence the targeted states to replace legitimate Biden electors with [Trump]'s.
71. On December 22, [Trump] met with [Jeffrey Clark of the DOJ] at the White House. [Jeffrey Clark] had not informed his leadership at the Justice Department of the meeting, which was a violation of the Justice Department's written policy restricting contacts with the White House to guard against improper political influence.
72. On December 26, [Jeffrey Clark] spoke on the phone with the Acting Attorney General [Jeffrey Rosen] and lied about the circumstances of his meeting with [Trump] at the White House, falsely claiming that the meeting had been unplanned. [Rosen] directed [Clark] not to have unauthorized contacts with the White House again, and [Clark] said he would not.
73. The next morning, on December 27, contrary to [Jeffrey Rosen]'s direction, [Jeffrey Clark] spoke with [Trump] on [Trump]'s cell phone for nearly three minutes.
74. That afternoon, [Trump] called the Acting Attorney General [Jeffrey Rosen] and Acting Deputy Attorney General [Richard Donoghue] and said, among other things, "People tell me [[Jeffrey Clark]] is great. I should put him in." [Trump] also raised multiple false claims of election fraud, which [Rosen] and [Donoghue] refuted. When [Rosen] told [Trump] that the Justice Department could not and would not change the outcome of the election, [Trump] responded, "Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen."
75. On December 28, [Jeffrey Clark] sent a [(maybe a pay-wall alert?)] draft letter to [Jeffrey Rosen] and [Richard Donoghue], which he proposed they all sign. The draft was addressed to state officials in Georgia, and [Clark] proposed sending versions of the letter to elected officials in other targeted states. The proposed letter contained numerous knowingly false claims about the election and the Justice Department, including that:
a. The Justice Department had "identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States[.]"
b. The Justice Department believed that in Georgia and other states, two valid slates of electors had gathered at the proper location on December 14, and that both sets of ballots had been transmitted to Congress. That is, [Clark]’s letter sought to advance [Trump]'s fraudulent elector plan by using the authority of the Justice Department to falsely present the fraudulent electors as a valid alternative to the legitimate electors.
c. The Justice Department urged that the state legislature convene a special legislative session to create the opportunity to, among other things, choose the fraudulent electors over the legitimate electors.
76. [Richard Donoghue] promptly responded to [Jeffrey Clark] by email and told him that his proposed letter was false, writing, "Despite dramatic claims to the contrary, we have not seen the type of fraud that calls into question the reported (and certified) results of the election." In a meeting shortly thereafter, [Jeffery Rosen] and [Donoghue] again directed [Clark] not to have unauthorized contact with the White House.
77. On December 31, [Trump] summoned to the Oval Office the Acting Attorney General [Jeffery Rosen], Acting Deputy Attorney General [Richard Donoghue], and other advisors. In the meeting, [Trump] again raised claims about election fraud that Justice Department officials already had told him were not true—and that the senior Justice Department officials reiterated were false—and suggested he might change the leadership in the Justice Department.
78. On January 2, 2021, just four days before Congress's certification proceeding, [Jeffrey Clark] tried to coerce [Jeffery Rosen] and [Richard Donoghue] to sign and send [Clark]'s draft letter, which contained false statements, to state officials. He told them that [Trump] was considering making [Clark] the new Acting Attorney General, but that [Clark] would decline [Trump]'s offer if the Acting Attorney General and Acting Deputy Attorney General would agree to send the proposed letter to the targeted states. The Justice Department officials refused.
79. The next morning, on January 3, despite having uncovered no additional evidence of election fraud, [Jeffrey Clark] sent to a Justice Department colleague an edited version of his draft letter to the states, which included a change from its previous claim that the Justice Department had "concerns" to a stronger false claim that "[a]s of today, there is evidence of
significant irregularities that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States ....”
80. Also on the morning of January 3, [Jeffrey Clark] met with [Trump] at the White House—again without having informed senior Justice Department officials—and accepted [Trump]'s offer that he become Acting Attorney General.
81. On the afternoon of January 3, [Jeffrey Clark] spoke with a Deputy White House Counsel. The previous month, the Deputy White House Counsel [Patrick Philbin] had informed [Trump] that "there is no world, there is no option in which you do not leave the White House [o]n January 20th." Now, the same Deputy White House Counsel tried to dissuade [Clark] from assuming the role of Acting Attorney General. [Philbin] reiterated to [Clark] that there had not been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that if [Trump] remained in office nonetheless, there would be "riots in every major city in the United States." [Clark] responded, "Well, [[Philbin]], that's why there's an Insurrection Act.."
82. Also that afternoon, [Jeffrey Clark] met with [Jeffery Rosen] and told him that [Trump] had decided to put [Clark] in charge of the Justice Department. [Rosen] responded that he would not accept being fired by a subordinate and immediately scheduled a meeting with [Trump] for that evening.
83. On the evening of January 3, [Trump] met for a briefing on an overseas national security issue with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [Gen. Mark Milley] and other senior national security advisors. The Chairman briefed [Trump] on the issue—which had previously arisen in December—as well as possible ways [Trump] could handle it. When the Chairman and another advisor recommended that [Trump] take no action because Inauguration Day was
only seventeen days away and any course of action could trigger something unhelpful, [Trump] calmly agreed, stating, "Yeah, you're right, it's too late for us. We're going to give that to the next guy."
84. [Trump] moved immediately from this national security briefing to the meeting that the Acting Attorney General [Jeffery Rosen] had requested earlier that day, which included [Jeffrey Clark], the Acting Attorney General [Rosen], the Acting Deputy Attorney General [Richard Donoghue], the Justice Department's Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel [Steven Engel], the White House Counsel [Pat Cipollone], a Deputy White House Counsel [Patrick Philbin], and a Senior Advisor [Eric Herschmann]. At the meeting, [Trump] expressed frustration with [Rosen] for failing to do anything to overturn the election results, and the group discussed [Clark]'s plans to investigate purported election fraud and to send his proposed letter to state officials—a copy of which was provided to [Trump] during the meeting. [Trump] relented in his plan to replace the Acting Attorney General with [Clark] only when he was told that it would result in mass resignations at the Justice Department and of his own White House Counsel.
85. At the meeting in the Oval Office on the night of January 3, [Jeffrey Clark] suggested that the Justice Department should opine that the Vice President could exceed his lawful authority during the certification proceeding and change the election outcome. When the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel [Steven Engel], began to explain why the Justice Department should not do so, [Trump] said, "No one here should be talking to the Vice President. I'm talking to the Vice President," and ended the discussion.
86. As the January 6 congressional certification proceeding approached and other efforts to impair, obstruct, and defeat the federal government function failed, [Trump] sought to enlist the Vice President to use his ceremonial role at the certification to fraudulently alter the election results. [Trump] did this first by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to convince the Vice President to accept [Trump]'s fraudulent electors, reject legitimate electoral votes, or send legitimate electoral votes to state legislatures for review rather than count them. When that failed, [Trump] attempted to use a crowd of supporters that he had gathered in Washington, D.C., to pressure the Vice President to fraudulently alter the election results.
87. On December 19, 2020, after cultivating widespread anger and resentment for weeks with his knowingly false claims of election fraud, [Trump] urged his supporters to travel to Washington on the day of the certification proceeding, tweeting, "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!" Throughout late December, he repeatedly urged his supporters to come to Washington for January 6.
88. On December 23, [Trump] re-tweeted a memo titled "Operation 'PENCE' CARD," which falsely asserted that the Vice President could, among other things, unilaterally disqualify legitimate electors from six targeted states.
89. On the same day, [John Eastman] circulated a two-page memorandum outlining a plan for the Vice President to unlawfully declare [Trump] the certified winner of the presidential election. In the memorandum, [Eastman] claimed that seven states had transmitted two slates of electors and proposed that the Vice President announce that "because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States." Next, [Eastman] proposed steps that he acknowledged violated the ECA,
advocating that, in the end, "Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected." Just two months earlier, on October 11, [John Eastman] had taken the opposite position, writing that neither the Constitution nor the ECA provided the Vice President discretion in the counting of electoral votes, or permitted him to "make the determination on his own."
90. On several private phone calls in late December and early January, [Trump] repeated knowingly false claims of election fraud and directly pressured the Vice President [Mike Pence] to use his ceremonial role at the certification proceeding on January 6 to fraudulently overturn the results of the election, and the Vice President resisted, including:
a. On December 25, when the Vice President called [Trump] to wish him a Merry Christmas, [Trump] quickly turned the conversation to January 6 and his request that the Vice President reject electoral votes that day. The Vice President pushed back, telling [Trump], as the Vice President already had in previous conversations, "You know I don't think I have the authority to change the outcome." [(search for “outcome”)]
b. On December 29, as reflected in the Vice President's contemporaneous notes, [Trump] falsely told the Vice President that the "Justice Dept [was] finding major infractions.” [(search for “infractions”)]
c. On January 1, [Trump] called the Vice President and berated him because he had learned that the Vice President had opposed a lawsuit seeking a judicial decision that, at the certification, the Vice President had the authority to reject or return votes to the states under the Constitution. The Vice President responded that he thought there was no constitutional basis for such authority and that it was improper. In response, [Trump] told the Vice President, "You're too honest." Within hours of the conversation, [Trump] reminded his supporters to meet in Washington before the certification proceeding, tweeting, "The BIG Protest Rally in Washington, D.C, will take place at 11.00 A.M. on January 6th. Locational details to follow. StopTheSteal!"
d. On January 3, [Trump] again told the Vice President that at the certification proceeding, the Vice President had the absolute right to reject electoral votes and the ability to overturn the election. The Vice President responded that he had no such authority, and that a federal appeals court had rejected the lawsuit making that claim the previous day.
91. On January 3, [John Eastman] circulated a second memorandum that included a new plan under which, contrary to the ECA, the Vice President would send the elector slates to the state legislatures to determine which slate to count.
92. On January 4, [Trump] held a meeting with [John Eastman], the Vice President, the Vice President's Chief of Staff, and the Vice President's Counsel for the purpose of convincing the Vice President, based on [Trump]'s knowingly false claims of election fraud, that the Vice President should reject or send to the states Biden's legitimate electoral votes, rather than count them. [Trump] deliberately excluded his White House Counsel from the meeting because the White House Counsel previously had pushed back on [Trump]'s false claims of election fraud.
93. During the meeting, as reflected in the Vice President's contemporaneous notes, [Trump] made knowingly false claims of election fraud, including, "Bottom line—won every state by 100,000s of votes" and "We won every state," and asked—regarding a claim his senior Justice Department officials previously had told him was false, including as recently as the night before—"What about 205,000 votes more in PA than voters?" [Trump] and [John Eastman] then asked the Vice President to either unilaterally reject the legitimate electors from the seven targeted states, or send the question of which slate was legitimate to the targeted states' legislatures. When the Vice President challenged [Eastman] on whether the proposal to return the question to the states was defensible, [Eastman] responded, "Well, nobody's tested it before." The Vice President then told [Trump], "Did you hear that? Even your own counsel is not saying I have that authority." [Trump] responded, "That's okay, I prefer the other suggestion" of the Vice President rejecting the electors unilaterally.
94. Also on January 4, when [John Eastman] acknowledged to [Trump]'s Senior Advisor [Eric Herschmann] that no court would support his proposal, [Herschmann] told [Eastman], "[Y]ou're going to cause riots in the streets." [Eastman] responded that there had previously been points in the nation's history where violence was necessary to protect the republic. After that conversation, [Herschmann] notified [Trump] that [Eastman] had conceded that his plan was "not going to work."
95. On the morning of January 5, at [Trump]'s direction, the Vice President's Chief of Staff [Marc Short] [(search for “Short”)] and the Vice President's Counsel [Greg Jacob] [(search for “Jacob”)] met again with [John Eastman]. [Eastman] now advocated that the Vice President do what [Trump] had said he preferred the day before: unilaterally reject electors from the targeted states. During this meeting, [Eastman] privately acknowledged to [Jacob] that he hoped to prevent judicial review of his proposal because he understood that it would be unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court. [Jacob] expressed to [Eastman] that following through with the proposal would result in a "disastrous situation" where the election might "have to be decided in the streets."
96. That same day, [Trump] encouraged supporters to travel to Washington on January 6, and he set the false expectation that the Vice President had the authority to and might use his ceremonial role at the certification proceeding to reverse the election outcome in [Trump]'s favor, including issuing the following Tweets:
a. At 11:06 a.m., "The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors." This was within 40 minutes of [Trump]'s earlier reminder, "See you in D.C."
b. At 5:05 p.m., "Washington is being inundated with people who don't want to see an election victory stolen . . . . Our Country has had enough, they won't take it anymore! We hear you (and love you) from the Oval Office."
c. At 5:43 p.m., "I will be speaking at the SAVE AMERICA RALLY tomorrow on the Ellipse at 11AM Eastern. Arrive early — doors open at 7AM Eastern. BIG CROWDS!"
97. Also on January 5, [Trump] met alone with the Vice President. When the Vice President refused to agree to [Trump]'s request that he obstruct the certification, [Trump] grew frustrated and told the Vice President that [Trump] would have to publicly criticize him. Upon learning of this, the Vice President's Chief of Staff [Marc Short] was concerned for the Vice President's safety and alerted the head of the Vice President's Secret Service detail.
98. As crowds began to gather in Washington and were audible from the Oval Office, [Trump] remarked to advisors that the crowd the following day on January 6 was going to be "angry."
99. That night, [Trump] approved and caused [Trump]'s Campaign to issue a public statement that [Trump] knew, from his meeting with the Vice President only hours earlier, was false: "The Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act."
100. On January 6, starting in the early morning hours, [Trump] again turned to knowingly false statements aimed at pressuring the Vice President to fraudulently alter the election outcome, and raised publicly the false expectation that the Vice President might do so:
a. At 1:00 a.m., [Trump] issued a Tweet that falsely claimed, "If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency. Many States want to decertify the mistake they made in certifying incorrect & even fraudulent numbers in a process NOT approved by their State Legislatures (which it must be). Mike can send it back!"
b. At 8:17 a.m., [Trump] issued a Tweet that falsely stated, "States want to correct their votes, which they now know were based on irregularities and fraud, plus corrupt process never received legislative approval. All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!"
101. On the morning of January 6, an agent of [Trump] contacted a United States Senator [Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson] to ask him to hand-deliver documents to the Vice President. The agent then facilitated the receipt by [Johnson]'s staff of the fraudulent certificates signed by [Trump]'s fraudulent electors in Michigan and Wisconsin, which were believed not to have been delivered to the Vice President or Archivist by mail. When one of the Senator's staffers [Johnson chief of staff Sean Riley] contacted a staffer for the Vice President [Chris Hodgson] by text message to arrange for delivery of what [Riley] had been told were "[a]lternate slate[s] of electors for MI and WI because archivist didn't receive them," [Hodgson] rejected them.
102. At 11:15 a.m., [Trump] called the Vice President and again pressured him to fraudulently reject or return Biden's legitimate electoral votes. The Vice President again refused. Immediately after the call, [Trump] decided to single out the Vice President in public remarks he would make within the hour, reinserting language that he had personally drafted earlier that morning—falsely claiming that the Vice President had authority to send electoral votes to the states—but that advisors had previously successfully advocated be removed.
103. Earlier that morning, [Trump] had selected [John Eastman] to join [Rudy Giuliani] in giving public remarks before his own. When they did so, based on knowingly false election fraud claims, [Giuliani] and [Eastman] intensified pressure on the Vice President to fraudulently obstruct the certification proceeding:
a. [Giuliani] told the crowd that the Vice President could "cast [the ECA] aside" and unilaterally "decide on the validity of these crooked ballots[.]" He also lied when he claimed to "have letters from five legislatures begging us" to send elector slates to the legislatures for review, and called for "trial by combat."
b. [Eastman] told the crowd, "[A]ll we are demanding of Vice President Pence is this afternoon at one o'clock he let the legislatures of the state look into this so we get to the bottom of it and the American people know whether we have control of the direction of our government or not. We no
longer live in a self-governing republic if we can't get the answer to this question."
104. Next, beginning at 11:56 a.m., [Trump] made multiple knowingly false statements integral to his criminal plans to defeat the federal government function, obstruct the certification, and interfere with others' right to vote and have their votes counted. [Trump] repeated false claims of election fraud, gave false hope that the Vice President might change the election outcome, and directed the crowd in front of him to go to the Capitol as a means to obstruct the certification and pressure the Vice President to fraudulently obstruct the certification. [Trump]'s knowingly false statements for these purposes included:
a. [Trump] falsely claimed that, based on fraud, the Vice President could alter the outcome of the election results, stating:
I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so, I hope so.
Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do—all, this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country—he has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our Constitution.
States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.
b. After [Trump] falsely stated that the Pennsylvania legislature wanted "to recertify their votes. They want to recertify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back," the crowd began to chant, "Send it back."
c. [Trump] also said that regular rules no longer applied, stating, "And fraud breaks up everything, doesn't it? When you catch somebody in a fraud, you're allowed to go by very different rules."
d. Finally, after exhorting that "we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore," [Trump] directed the people in front of him to head to the Capitol, suggested he was going with them, and told them to give Members of Congress "the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country."
105. During and after [Trump]'s remarks, thousands of people marched toward the Capitol.
106. Shortly before 1:00 p.m., the Vice President issued a public statement explaining that his role as President of the Senate at the certification proceeding that was about to begin did' not include "unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not."
107. Before [Trump] had finished speaking, a crowd began to gather at the Capitol. Thereafter, a mass of people—including individuals who had traveled to Washington and to the Capitol at [Trump]'s direction—broke through barriers cordoning off the Capitol grounds and advanced on the building, including by violently attacking law enforcement officers trying to secure it.
108. [Trump], who had returned to the White House after concluding his remarks, watched events at the Capitol unfold on the television in the dining room next to the Oval Office.
109. At 2:13 p.m., after more than an hour of steady, violent advancement, the crowd at the Capitol broke into the building.
110. Upon receiving news that individuals had breached the Capitol, [Trump]'s advisors told him that there was a riot there and that rioters had breached the building. When
advisors urged [Trump] to issue a calming message aimed at the rioters, [Trump] refused, instead repeatedly remarking that the people at the Capitol were angry because the election had been stolen.
111. At 2:24 p.m., after advisors had left [Trump] alone in his dining room, [Trump] issued a Tweet intended to further delay and obstruct the certification: "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!"
112. One minute later, at 2:25 p.m., the United States Secret Service was forced to evacuate the Vice President to a secure location.
113. At the Capitol, throughout the afternoon, members of the crowd chanted, "Hang Mike Pence!"; "Where is Pence? Bring him out!"; and "Traitor Pence!"
114. [Trump] repeatedly refused to approve a message directing rioters to leave the Capitol, as urged by his most senior advisors [including Eric Herschmann?]—including the White House Counsel, a Deputy White House Counsel, the Chief of Staff, a Deputy Chief of Staff, and a Senior Advisor [Eric Herschmann?]. Instead, [Trump] issued two Tweets that did not ask rioters to leave the Capitol but instead falsely suggested that the crowd at the Capitol was being peaceful, including:
a. At 2:38 p.m., "Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!"
b. At 3:13 p.m., "I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order- respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!"
115. At 3:00 p.m., [Trump] had a phone call with the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives [Kevin McCarthy] [(search for “Kevin”)]. [Trump] told [McCarthy] that the crowd at the Capitol was more upset about the election than [McCarthy] was.
116. At 4:17 p.m., [Trump] released a video message on Twitter that he had just taped in the White House Rose Garden. In it, [Trump] repeated the knowingly false claim that "[w]e had an election that was stolen from us," and finally asked individuals to leave the Capitol, while telling them that they were "very special" and that "we love you."
117. After the 4:17 p.m. Tweet, as [Trump] joined others in the outer Oval Office to watch the attack on the Capitol on television, [Trump] said, "See, this is what happens when they try to steal an election. These people are angry. These people are really angry about it. This is what happens."
118. At 6:01 p.m., [Trump] tweeted, "These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!"
119. On the evening of January 6, [Trump] and [Rudy Giuliani] attempted to exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol by calling lawmakers to convince them, based on knowingly false claims of election fraud, to delay the certification, including:
a. [Trump], through White House aides, attempted to reach two United States Senators at 6:00 p.m.
b. From 6:59 p.m. until 7:18 p.m., [Rudy Giuliani] [(search for “placed”)] placed calls to five United States Senators [Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska)] and one United States Representative [Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio)].
c. Co-Conspirator 6 attempted to confirm phone numbers for six United States Senators whom [Trump] had directed [Giuliani] to call and attempt to enlist in further delaying the certification.
d. In one of the calls, [Giuliani] left a voicemail intended for a United States Senator that said, "We need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down so we can get these legislatures to get more information to you. And I know they're reconvening at eight tonight but the only strategy we can follow is to object to numerous states and raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrow—ideally until the end of tomorrow."
e. In another message intended for another United States Senator, [Rudy Giuliani] repeated knowingly false allegations of election fraud, including that the vote counts certified by the states to Congress were incorrect and that the governors who had certified knew they were incorrect; that "illegal immigrants" had voted in substantial numbers in Arizona; and that "Georgia gave you a number in which 65,000 people who were underage voted." [Giuliani] also claimed that the Vice President's actions had been surprising and asked the Senator to "object to every state and kind of spread this out a little bit like a filibuster[.]"
120. At 7:01 p.m., while [Rudy Giuliani] was calling United States Senators on behalf of [Trump], the White House Counsel [Pat Cipollone] called [Trump] to ask him to withdraw any objections and allow the certification. [Trump] refused.
121. The attack on the Capitol obstructed and delayed the certification for approximately six hours, until the Senate and House of Representatives came back into session separately at 8:06 p.m. and 9:02 p.m., respectively, and came together in a Joint Session at 11:35 p.m.
122. At 11:44 p.m., [John Eastman] emailed the Vice President's Counsel advocating that the Vice President violate the law and seek further delay of the certification. [Eastman] wrote, "I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation [of the ECA] and adjourn for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here."
123. At 3:41 a.m. on January 7, as President of the Senate, the Vice President announced the certified results of the 2020 presidential election in favor of Biden.
124. [Trump] and his co-conspirators committed one or more of the acts to effect the object of the conspiracy alleged above in Paragraphs 13, 15-16, 18-22, 24, 26, 28, 30-33, 35, 37-39, 41, 43-44, 46, 50, 52, 54, 56, 57-64, 67, 71-75, 78-82, 84, 85, 87-97, 99-100, 102-104, 111, 114, 116, 118-119, and 122.
125. The allegations contained in paragraphs 1 through 4 and 8 through 123 of this Indictment are re-alleged and fully incorporated here by reference.
126. From on or about November 14, 2020, through on or about January 7, 2021, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the Defendant,
did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with co-conspirators, known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to corruptly obstruct and impede an official proceeding, that is, the certification of the electoral vote, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1512(c)(2).
127. The allegations contained in paragraphs 1 through 4 and 8 through 123 of this Indictment are re-alleged and fully incorporated here by reference.
128. From on or about November 14, 2020, through on or about January 7, 2021, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the Defendant,
129. The allegations contained in paragraphs 1 through 4 and 8 through 123 of this Indictment are re-alleged and fully incorporated here by reference.
130. From on or about November 14, 2020, through on or about January 20, 2021, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the Defendant,
did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with co-conspirators, known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States—that is, the right to vote, and to have one's vote counted.
OKAY, IT’S RICK AGAIN! ARE WE GOOD HERE?
Once again, I encourage you to share this post — yeah, with friends, assuming you have any, but maybe it really needs to be seen by people of Trumpian persuasion. (Know any?)
As for COPYRIGHTS of all of this?
As I understand it, Jack Smith’s original indictment can’t be copyrighted, not by me nor by you, because it was written by a government employee (that being either he himself or whomever he assigned to write it), but as for my own ADDITIONS to the government copy, I do think those belong to me.
But this this DOES NOT MEAN YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO SHARE THEM! In fact, I hope you do!
AND yes, you can, under my Creative Commons license — which, as I understand, pretty much just requires that you should give me proper credit, and if you share it with others (even commercially), share under the same terms.
© 2023 Rick Brown @ BACKSTORYJOURNAL.com.
(This work — or at least MY part of it — is licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.)
ALSO: Just in case you’d like to see what Jack Smith’s actual original work looks like,
… without all my weird additions, but maybe even to double check my so-called “accuracy”, it can be found at this link:
https://www.justice.gov/storage/US_v_Trump_23_cr_257.pdf
In fact, if you find typos or want to let me know that I goofed something up somewhere, either post me a note in comments at that button (although I’m not sure how those work)…
… or if that doesn’t work, try dropping me an email at “rickb750” at “gmail.com”, assuming that even works. I can’t be sure.
And if all those fail, maybe check the obituaries, since my wife promised she’d get the word out. I would do that myself, but I figure I can’t because I won’t be here.
I’m guessing the reason I never hear from anybody anymore is that either I don’t understand how to receive messages from anybody, or else maybe that I don’t understand that I’m dead.