The New York Times has published this morning what the left must feel is a blockbuster smoking gun that will surely land Trump in prison for the rest of his life.
It’s a memo describing how the alternative electors plan was supposed to work during the 2020 election.
Here’s the gist:
A lawyer allied with President Donald J. Trump first laid out a plot to use false slates of electors to subvert the 2020 election in a previously unknown internal campaign memo that prosecutors are portraying as a crucial link in how the Trump team’s efforts evolved into a criminal conspiracy.
The existence of the Dec. 6, 2020, memo came to light in last week’s indictment of Mr. Trump, though its details remained unclear. But a copy obtained by The New York Times shows for the first time that the lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, acknowledged from the start that he was proposing “a bold, controversial strategy” that the Supreme Court “likely” would reject in the end.
But even if the plan did not ultimately pass legal muster at the highest level, Mr. Chesebro argued that it would achieve two goals. It would focus attention on claims of voter fraud and “buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column.”
The memo had been a missing piece in the public record of how Mr. Trump’s allies developed their strategy to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory. In mid-December, the false Trump electors could go through the motions of voting as if they had the authority to do so. Then, on Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally count those slates of votes, rather than the official and certified ones for Joseph R. Biden Jr.
While that basic plan itself was already known, the document, described by prosecutors as the “fraudulent elector memo,” provides new details about how it originated and was discussed behind the scenes. Among those details is Mr. Chesebro’s proposed “messaging” strategy to explain why pro-Trump electors were meeting in states where Mr. Biden was declared the winner. The campaign would present that step as “a routine measure that is necessary to ensure” that the correct electoral slate could be counted by Congress if courts or legislatures later concluded that Mr. Trump had actually won the states.
As the last paragraph explains this is really nothing new. This only indicates who came up with this and worked through the details. We already know about the alternate electors plan and how it worked out.
Mark Levin pointed out there’s nothing to see here except the fact that this memo was leaked by someone in Jack Smith’s office:
“While the phony special counsel seeks a gag order on Trump, he leaks to the New York Times a memo that their favorite Pravda mouthpiece, Maggie Haberman, dutifully uses as a breaking story. First, Trump left office when he was supposed to leave office. There was no insurrection or seditious conspiracy. Even Jack the Ripper Smith provides not such charge in his pathetic indictment. Second, let’s see if the Obama-donating and appointed Democrat activist judge orders the prosecutors into her courtroom to demand that they determine who leaked the memo during the course of a criminal case held in her courtroom. Third, the memo means nothing. There was no “plot.” It’s in a memo, and the memo, as reported, is an effort to find votes/electors for Trump. There’s nothing unconstitutional, illegal, or criminal.”
Exactly. Smith is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. If Trump had intended to subvert the election process like they claim, he would have done far more to stay in power. But he didn’t. There was a peaceful transfer of power beginning in December with Biden’s transition committee. And it ended with Trump leaving office in January.
As Levin has pointed out in the past, these alternate electors had to be approved by Congress. Which meant they had no authority until authorized by Congress, which never happened. If this was truly a plan for Trump to stay in power, it was a really bad one.