Stunning New Emails Show Trump Team Calling Their Own Electoral Vote Scheme ‘Fake’
Newly-uncovered emails show former President Donald Trump’s campaign team and their collaborators knew their attempts to dispute the 2020 election were legally fraught to the point of admitting it was “fake.” This according to a report from The New York Times.
The Times authenticated a series of emails from Trump campaign officials, lawyers, and people close to the ex-president, all of whom were involved with the plot to organize alternative electors and falsely declare Trump’s 2020 victory. These electors were meant to give former Vice President Mike Pence and Trump’s allies a pretense to disrupt Congress’ certification of the election results, which wound up getting derailed anyway with the events of January 6.
The emails show that Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, and John Eastman all had correspondence with Trump campaign officials who worked with outside lawyers to assemble their list of alternative electors list, even though they knew it might not hold up to scrutiny. One email shows that Jack Wilenchik, a Phoenix-based lawyer who helped with the plot in Arizona, contacted Trump campaign strategic adviser Boris Epshteyn with a suggestion of how to brand their electors to not be “fake,” as he, himself, called them.
“We would just be sending in ‘fake’ electoral votes to Pence so that ‘someone’ in Congress can make an objection when they start counting votes, and start arguing that the ‘fake’ votes should be counted,” Wilenchik said. He later sent a follow-up email noting that “‘alternative’ votes is probably a better term than ‘fake’ votes.”
Another crucial point: This email isn’t about having fake electors in place as a contingency in case results were overturned, as was claimed at the time.
This is talking about springing this on Jan. 6. And it was discussed ~a month ahead of time. pic.twitter.com/ynHU4KQ4Jr
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) July 26, 2022
The emails show that Epshteyn was the point of contact for Giuliani and Eastman while the plan was being formulated and embraced by the former president. Trump and Eastman both tried to pressure Pence into going along with the scheme, even though former top Pence aide Greg Jacob recently testified that Eastman knew it would’ve violated the Electoral Count Act.
From the Times:
The emails highlight how much of the legwork of finding ways to challenge Mr. Trump’s losses in the battleground states was done by Mike Roman, director of Election Day operations for Mr. Trump’s campaign.
Mr. Epshteyn and Mr. Roman, the emails show, coordinated with others who played roles in advising Mr. Trump. Among them were the lawyers Jenna Ellis and Bruce Marks; Gary Michael Brown, who served as the deputy director of Election Day operations for Mr. Trump’s campaign; and Christina Bobb, who at the time worked for One America News Network and now works with Mr. Trump’s PAC.
The emails were apparently not shared with lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office, who advised that the “fake electors” plan was not legally sound, or other lawyers on the campaign.
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