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TPM obtained the trove of documents after Michigan prosecutors with Attorney General Dana Nessel’s (D) office sent attorneys a tranche of records provided by Chesebro as part of his cooperation with their investigation into the fake electors. Chesebro supplied the documents, which include emails, texts, a 4.5 hour interview, and legal memos, to prosecutors. The records do not provide a comprehensive accounting of the Trump campaign’s entire effort to reverse the President’s loss; they reflect what Chesebro provided as he sought to avoid further prosecution.
On a normal Jan. 6, the Vice President opens the electoral votes submitted by the states. Before a 2022 reform to the Electoral Count Act went into effect, one senator and one representative objecting to a particular state’s results would lead to time-limited debate.
By discarding the Electoral Count Act, Trump campaign lawyers suggested, Republicans in Congress could halt the certification and bring forth endless claims of election fraud in swing states, a process that, according to the documents, Chesebro hoped would create a spectacle, revealing the GOP-friendly Supreme Court as the only rational, functioning actor left standing.
It was a Rube Goldberg device of a plan, and one that sought to use chaos as the invisible force drawing the high court — and whoever else the Trump campaign attorneys believed could resolve the election — into the mess. The hours of violence that ultimately emerged on Jan. 6 as Congress met to certify Biden’s win offer a glimpse of the potential consequences that might have accompanied weeks of delay in formalizing a winner. But for a Trump campaign desperate for a win, extending Jan. 6 to Jan. 20 would allow the high court to serve as a kind of deus ex machina as Congress — and the country — remained mired in strife over the failure to complete the legal formalities around Joe Biden’s election.
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