Top Donald Trump campaign advisors knew in early December 2020 of concerns that criminal charges could arise after submitting certificates falsely claiming the Republican won battleground states like Michigan that he'd actually lost, documents first obtained by The Detroit News show.
The emails and text messages between campaign officials and volunteers show supporters of Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election made attempts to quell fears about the potential for prosecution in Pennsylvania and New Mexico. Those supporters, however, declined to act on the concerns in Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin, according to records from a lawyer who assisted the former president's campaign.
A group of Republicans in Pennsylvania — where Joe Biden won in 2020 by 1 percentage point — had hesitations about authorizing certificates claiming to be the state's official presidential electors, the documents show. They expressed legal concerns during a Dec. 12, 2020 conference call with personal Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and campaign official Mike Roman, according to emails about the conversation.
"The electors are concerned about the partisan AG targeting them," wrote Trump-aligned attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who was also involved in the Dec. 12 call, in an email sent the same day to Matthew Morgan, a lawyer for the Trump campaign.
To assuage those concerns, Chesebro authored alternative language for the Pennsylvania and New Mexico electoral certificates that stipulated the Republicans in those states weren't official electors but "might later be determined" to be, according to an email.
"Mike, I think the language at the start of the certificate should be changed in all the states," Chesebro wrote in a text message to Roman on Dec. 12, 2020. "Let's look at the language carefully."
"I don't," responded Roman, the Trump campaign's director of Election Day operations.
"I can help with drafting in a couple hours," Chesebro replied.
"F— these guys," Roman messaged back.
Trump's campaign didn't immediately respond Tuesday to The Detroit News' request for comment.
Chesebro later told investigators in Michigan that the same-day conference call was "very heated," but he wasn't sure why Roman messaged, "F— these guys."
In another message to Roman sent Dec. 12, 2020, Chesebro asked, "Just placate PA?"
"I do think they're worried about AG a—hole," Chesebro added, possibly referring to Democrat and then-Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is now the state's governor.
Roman and Chesebro's exchange came just two days before the day Republicans gathered in the battleground states on Dec. 14, 2020 to sign certificates as part an effort to challenge Biden's victory in Congress.
Unlike in New Mexico and Pennsylvania, 16 Republicans in Michigan signed a certificate falsely dubbing them the state's "duly elected and qualified" electors. Trump had lost Michigan to Biden by 3 percentage points, meaning Biden's electors were the true ones. In July, Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel charged each of the 16 Republicans who signed the certificates with eight felonies connected to forgery.
Chesebro, who created memos used by the Trump campaign to direct their false electors plan, pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of conspiracy to commit filing false documents in a parallel Georgia case in October and has since been cooperating with investigators.
The News reviewed hundreds of pages of emails and text messages Nessel's office obtained that involved Chesebro. Records show he was interviewed an agent from the Michigan attorney general's office earlier this month.
In one Dec. 11, 2020, email, Chesebro argued that the purpose behind sending Republican electoral votes to Congress was "to provide the opportunity to debate election irregularities in Congress and to keep alive the possibility that the votes could be flipped to Trump." Congress ultimately upheld Biden's win on Jan. 6, 2021, after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.
While working with Trump's campaign to organize the Dec. 14, 2020, gatherings, Chesebro began to express his own worries about whether the electoral certificates they signed should specifically claim the Republicans were the "duly elected" electors, or if they should have conditions, such as a future and unlikely court ruling that would reverse a result in any of the battlegrounds. Those concerns came after the Pennsylvania Republicans voiced theirs on Dec. 12, 2020, in the conference call.
In an email to Morgan that day, Chesebro said the Pennsylvania group wanted "assurance that any legal expenses would be covered," adding that Giuliani "was receptive to" the idea.
On Dec. 12, 2020, Chesebro suggested adding conditional language to the Pennsylvania certificates and wrote in an email to Roman that doing so "might be worth suggesting to the electors in other states."
According to records obtained by The News, Roman didn't respond directly to the idea in the email exchanges.
The Trump campaign's plans initially focused on six states, but records show that Boris Epshteyn, an advisor to Trump, asked Chesebro to create a meeting packet for Republicans in New Mexico, a state Biden won by a 10 percent margin. In a Dec. 13, 2020, email Chesebro told Roman he added "qualifying language" to the beginning of the New Mexico certificate similar to what was added to the Pennsylvania certificates, noting that it "might be good to have it added in all states." But Chesebro had already sent out certificates for us in other states, including Michigan, in which a Republican activist in the state was sent a draft on Dec. 10, according to emails. The New Mexico certificates ultimately featured the "might later be determined" condition, whereas the Michigan certificates saw the Republicans falsely described as "the duly and qualified electors."
A day after sending top Trump campaign officials his idea to alter the certificates, Chesebro defended them to James Fitzpatrick, a Trump campaign employee working in Pennsylvania. Prosecutors can't "punish electors for being faithful and backing their candidate through speech acts that expand Congress's options," Chesebro said. "The campaign should indemnify electors against any legal costs. If AG tries this, a (federal) court might well enjoin it," the lawyer wrote in an email.
In a Dec. 6 interview with an agent in Nessel's office, Chesebro said his immediate response to the concerns in Pennsylvania was to change the language, according to a recording of the conversation.
Chesebro also told Nessel's office that Roman "didn't agree" and said he used the conditional language in the New Mexico documents and recommended using it for all of the states involved.
"For whatever reason, it wasn't done," Chesebro said during his interview.
In that same interview, Chesebro revealed details about a December 2020 Oval Office meeting and photo-op between a group of Trump-supporting lawyers and the then-president where the attorneys were instructed against getting Trump's hopes up about overturning the election, according to CNN.
“There was a conscious effort to deflect him from a sense of any possibility that he could pull out the election,” Chesebro said about the thinking going into the meeting. “…Our marching orders were: Don’t say anything that makes him feel more positive than the beginning of the meeting.’”
One attorney, Jim Troupis, bluntly told Trump after leading Trump's failed election challenge in Wisconsin that it was over in the state.
But Chesebro deviated from the plan when the conversation focused on Arizona, telling Trump he could still win — and explained how the "alternate electors" he helped gather in Arizona and six other states gave Trump an opening to continue challenging the election until Congress certified the results on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I ended up explaining that Arizona was still hypothetically possible — because the alternate electors had voted,” Chesebro told investigators in Michigan, later adding that this made it “clear (to Trump) in a way that maybe it hadn’t been before, that we had until January 6 to win.”
Much to former RNC Chairman Reince Priebus apparent dismay, Chesebro's optimism created problems by apparently renewing Trump's hopes to stay in office. Priebus left the meeting "extremely concerned" about the Jan. 6 conversation and later warned Troupis and Chesebro not to disclose to anyone what happened.
The "photo-op ... gone south," as Chesebro called the Dec. 16, 2020, meeting uncovers a previously unknown instance of Trump hearing directly that he lost, which could factor into his federal election subversion trial.
The details, some of which were previously reported by The Washington Post, also underscore how members of Trump's circle furthered his aspirations to remain in power.
Two days later, Chesebro received a terse email from Troupis that said, “Reince was very explicit in his admonition that nothing about our meeting with the President can be shared with anyone. The political cross-currents are deep and fast and neither you or I have any ability to swim through them.”
By then it was too late. The former president ignored Troupis's comments during the meeting and embraced Chesebro's theories. He continued to falsely claim he won in Wisconsin and elsewhere, including on Jan. 6, when he attempted to weaponize the false Republican electors to "disenfranchise millions of voters," according to his federal indictment.
CNN has previously identified Chesebro as an unindicted co-conspirator in Trump's federal election subversion case. The lawyer's cooperation in Michigan and other states could bolster special counsel Jack Smith's prosecution even though it's unclear if Chesebro intends to directly cooperate with federal prosecutors.
Roman is facing criminal charges as part of a sprawling racketeering investigation into Trump's election subversion efforts in Georgia. A fundraising page for his legal defense says, "Mike, a father of eight and a devout Roman Catholic, is being targeted by the government in an unprecedented effort to criminalize politics."
No staffers of the Trump campaign have been charged in Michigan, but charges are pending against 15 of the 16 Republican electors in the state. Nessel's office reached a cooperation deal with and dropped the charges against one of the Republicans.
