3.2 President Trump and the Campaign Adopt the Fake Elector Scheme

¶In early December, the highest levels of the Trump Campaign took note of Chesebro’s fake elector plan and began to operationalize it. On December 6th, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows forwarded a copy of Chesebro’s November 18, 2020, memo to Trump Campaign Senior Advisor Jason Miller writing, “Let’s have a discussion about this tomorrow.”²⁵²⁵ Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Mark Meadows Production), MM003771. Miller replied that he just engaged with reporters on the subject, to which Meadows wrote: “If you are on it then never mind the meeting. We just need to have someone coordinating the electors for states.”²⁶²⁶ Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Mark Meadows Production), MM003771 (emphasis added). Miller clarified that he had only been “working the PR angle” and they should still meet, to which Meadows answered: “Got it.”²⁷²⁷ Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Mark Meadows Production), MM003769. Later that week, Miller sent Meadows a spreadsheet that the Trump Campaign had compiled.²⁸²⁸ Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Mark Meadows Production), MM010783, MM010784. It listed contact information for nearly all of the 79 GOP nominees to the electoral college on the November ballot for Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.²⁹²⁹ Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Mark Meadows Production), MM010783, MM010784. And on December 8th, Meadows received a text message from a former State legislator in Louisiana recommending that the proposed “Trump electors from AR [sic] MI GA PA WI NV all meet next Monday at their state capitols[,] [c]all themselves to order, elect officers, and cast their votes for the President. . . . Then they certify their votes and transmit that certificate to Washington.”³⁰³⁰ Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Mark Meadows Production), MM013515. Meadows replied: “We are.”³¹³¹ Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Mark Meadows Production), MM013516.

¶Cassidy Hutchinson, a Special Assistant to the President and an assistant to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, confirmed Meadows’s significant involvement in the plan. Hutchinson told the Select Committee that Meadows followed the progress of the fake elector effort closely and that she “remember[ed] him frequently having calls, meetings, and outreach with individuals and this just being a prominent topic of discussion in our office.” When asked how many of his calls or meetings it came up in, she estimated “[d]ozens.”³²³² Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Continued Interview of Cassidy Hutchinson, (Mar. 7, 2022), pp. 54–55.

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¶The evidence indicates that by December 7th or 8th, President Trump had decided to pursue the fake elector plan and was driving it. Trump Campaign Associate General Counsel Joshua Findlay was tasked by the campaign’s general counsel, Matthew Morgan, around December 7th or 8th with exploring the feasibility of assembling unrecognized slates of Trump electors in a handful of the States that President Trump had lost.³³³³ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Joshua Findlay, (May 25, 2022), pp. 27–28. Findlay told the Select Committee “it was my understanding that the President made this decision. . . .”³⁴³⁴ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Joshua Findlay, (May 25, 2022), p. 29. As recounted by Findlay, Morgan conveyed that the client—President Trump—directed the campaign lawyers to “look into electors in these potential litigation States[.]”³⁵³⁵ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Joshua Findlay, (May 25, 2022), pp. 86–87. President Trump personally called RNC Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel days before December 14th to enlist the RNC’s assistance in the scheme.³⁶³⁶ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Ronna Romney McDaniel, (June 1, 2022), pp. 7–8. Ms. McDaniel didn’t recall the exact date of the call, but thought it was at least “a few days before December 14th” and may have been sometime before the Supreme Court rejected the case Texas v. Pennsylvania on December 11th. President Trump opened the call by introducing McDaniel to John Eastman, who described “the importance of the RNC helping the campaign to gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing changed the results in any of the States.”³⁷³⁷ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Ronna Romney McDaniel, (June 1, 2022), pp. 8–9. According to McDaniel, she called President Trump back soon after the call ended, letting him know that she agreed to his request and that some RNC staffers were already assisting.³⁸³⁸ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Ronna Romney McDaniel, (June 1, 2022), pp. 9–13. McDaniel asserted to the Select Committee that even after December 14th she was under the impression that the seven slates of fake electors were strictly contingent in nature pending authorization by a court of law, and that she relayed this to several concerned Republican officials in the contested States. See id., at 18. However, there is also no indication that she took action to condemn or block the misuse of these contingent elector slates by January 6th.Show full note

¶Ronna McDaniel at the Republican National Convention on August 24, 2020. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

¶On December 13th and 14th, President Trump worked with Rudolph Giuliani on the plan’s implementation. On the 13th, Miller texted some of his colleagues to check in about the fake elector meetings scheduled for the following day. He let them know that Giuliani had told him “POTUS was aware” that they would be filing litigation in four States just “to keep the effort going”—which the Select Committee believes was to create a pretext to claim that it was still possible for the fake electors to be authorized retroactively.³⁹³⁹ Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Tim Murtaugh Production), XXM-0021349, (December 13, 2020, text message from Jason Miller to Justin Clark and Eric Herschmann). For instance, on December 11th, Chesebro wrote to a lawyer working on litigation efforts in Arizona, asking him to file a petition that would keep the litigation alive through the 14th: “[C]an you get the cert. petition on file by Monday? Reason is that Kelli Ward & Kelly Townsend just spoke to the Mayor about the campaign’s request that all electors vote Monday in all contested states. Ward and Townsend are concerned it could appear treasonous for the AZ electors to vote on Monday if there is no pending court proceeding that might, eventually, lead to the electors being ratified as the legitimate ones. Which is a valid point . . . .” Maggie Haberman and Luke Broadwater, “Arizona Officials Warned Fake Electors Plan Could ‘Appear Treasonous,’” The New York Times, (Aug. 2, 2022), available at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/02/us/politics/arizona-trump-fake-electors.html (emphasis in original).Show full note (In subsequent litigation, a Federal district court found that President Trump “filed certain lawsuits not to obtain legal relief, but to disrupt or delay the January 6th congressional proceedings through the courts.”⁴⁰⁴⁰ Order re Privilege of Remaining Documents at 15, Eastman v. Thompson et al., No. 8:22-cv-99-DOC-DFM (C.D. Cal. Oct. 19, 2022), ECF No. 372.) The next day, Miller sent an email asking whether they were going to issue a press release about electors, and he was told the “Mayor [is] going to discuss with POTUS.”⁴¹⁴¹ Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Tim Murtaugh Production), XXM-0019417 (December 14, 2020, emails between Jason Miller and Boris Epshteyn).