Who Is Kenneth Chesebro? The Lesser-Known Trump Attorney Behind 2020 Electors Plot

Topline

As President Donald Trump faces a federal indictment over his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, a newly surfaced memo from Trump’s legal team the New York Times published Wednesday found one of his lesser-known attorneys, Kenneth Chesebro, not only helped craft the so-called fake electors scheme central to alleged efforts to overturn the election results, but doubted it would work.

Kenneth Chesebro, a lesser-known Trump attorney, pushed for the dubious fake electors theory to … [+] challenge Trump’s 2020 election loss, but wasn’t sold it would work.

Getty Images

Key Facts

In the memo, dated December 6, 2020, Chesebro laid down his brazen fake electors scheme, calling on GOP electors in six swing states to cast new ballots for Trump and send them to Washington for a January 6 congressional certification as though Trump had been elected.

According to the strategy, Trump would “force” lawmakers, the media and the public to “focus on the substantive evidence of illegal election and counting activities in the six contested states,” Chesebro wrote, while former Vice President Mike Pence would then either delay the vote count or block the confirmation of the election—which Pence refused to do.

Chesebro, however, admitted he was “not necessarily advising” that the strategy be implemented, and that “there are many reasons” why it might not work.

Chesebro, who is believed to be co-conspirator 5 in the Department of Justice’s indictment of Trump, has faced criticism over his role in the fake electors plot, though he hasn’t been charged and hasn’t faced the same fate as former Trump attorney John Eastman, the former legal scholar and so-called mastermind behind the dubious fake electors legal theory who is facing disbarment and is reportedly concerned about being criminally charged in the Department of Justice’s case against Trump.

Last March, Chesebro was subpoenaed by the House January 6 committee in its investigation into Trump’s alleged efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election.

Chesebro was also one of five Trump aides and lawyers to receive a criminal referral last December from the committee, following its 18-month investigation—along with Eastman, Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jeffrey Clark, as well as Trump himself.

Key Background

Chesebro’s memo shows how his fake electors scheme developed quickly in the months after the 2020 election. That memo was dated one month after a previous memo to Jim Troupis—a Wisconsin attorney who challenged the results of President Joe Biden’s win in the state—in which Chesebro laid out the fake electors plan as an effort to protect Trump’s rights if he won a future court battle and was declared the winner in that state, using the fake electors’ ballots as evidence. One month later, however, Chesebro reportedly had made the scheme a central tenet of his plan to overturn the election nationally, writing in the December 6, 2020 memo obtained by the Times that “it seems feasible that the Trump campaign can prevent Biden from amassing 270 electoral votes” needed to win the presidential election during a congressional proceeding to confirm the results of the election.

News Peg

Trump pleaded not guilty last week to four felony counts following the DOJ’s investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden—one of three indictments of the former president has faced since he launched his reelection bid late last year (Trump was also indicted over his alleged mishandling of classified White House documents after he left the Oval Office and for alleged hush money payments to three people in the run-up to the 2016 election). The charges levied against Trump last week by Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith included conspiracy to defraud the U.S., conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy against rights and obstruction of an official proceeding—which all carry potential prison sentences if Trump is convicted. Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and slammed prosecutors for waiting until the 2024 election cycle was well underway to bring charges against him, while his legal team has argued his claims of widespread voter fraud were protected by his First Amendment right to free speech.

What To Watch For

Washington, D.C. Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya scheduled Trump’s next hearing in the case for August 28 before federal District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who will reportedly set a trial date at that hearing.

Contra

Trump’s legal team has had significant turnover over the past three years as the former president faces a slew of legal battles. Nearly a dozen of Trump’s attorneys have departed, including Jim Trusty, who abruptly withdrew from Trump’s criminal defense team in the DOJ’s classified documents investigation in June, following the likes of John Rowley, Tim Parlatore, Rudy Giuliani, Cleta Mitchell, Sidney Powell, Bryan Hughes, Linda Kerns and John Scott.

Big Number

37 percentage points. That’s the size of Trump’s early lead in the 2024 Republican presidential primaries, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted late last month of likely GOP voters, with 54% of respondents saying they support Trump, over 17% for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and 3% for Pence, as well as former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.).