Since the news of Donald Trump’s third indictment last week, we’ve seen some great reporting explaining how the trial could play out. The latest example of this was first reported by The New York Times, and details a previously unseen memo that’s providing potentially damning new evidence against the former president.
Kenneth Chesebro is a Trump lawyer and one of the co-conspirators identified but not charged in the Justice Department’s most recent indictment. In this newly reported memo, Chesebro outlines the “fake elector scheme,” a plot hinging on the incorrect claim that former Vice President Mike Pence had the power to block the certification of the states’ votes on Jan. 6, 2021 and install a fraudulent slate of electors.
This wasn’t about having a scheme that worked — it was about creating delay and ultimately chaos.
Chesebro’s memo acknowledges that the Supreme Court would likely end up rejecting such a plan. But, he claimed, promoting it publicly would “buy the Trump campaign more time to challenge the election.”
This wasn’t about having a scheme that worked; it was about creating delay and ultimately chaos. This is what Russia was trying to do in 2016, and what Yevgeny Prigozhin bragged about doing via troll farms.
I mean, come on.
Trump’s Republican supporters in Congress, as well as some of his campaign opponents, shame themselves every day if they don’t see the link between Russian plans to sow confusion and Trumpworld's own plans to sow confusion, delays, and perhaps even rioting in the streets.
They call it free speech. I call it un-American.
The Republican establishment claims Hunter Biden’s plea deal proves “there are two systems of justice.” And yet here we’re talking about an illegal scheme to overthrow an election.
Can they really claim that there’s some kind of legal equivalency? Or some kind of moral equivalency?
That’s grotesque, and Republicans know it.
If Jack Smith were a Democrat, they'd have him locked up. He’s just trying to bring this guy to justice. And yet the GOP stands silent as Trump threatens Smith — a federal prosecutor, an officer of the U.S. court system.
Silent.
And then the GOP wonders why it keeps losing elections. It’s not going to stop. Republicans are on the wrong side of history.
And then the GOP wonders why it keeps losing elections. It’s not going to stop.
Warren Buffett says that if you bet against the United States, you lose. The GOP has been betting on a guy who worked to undermine confidence in American democracy.
A man who encouraged riots on January 6 and sat back and did nothing, while his children and lawyers begged him to calm the crowds.
Trump’s reported response? Maybe Pence “deserves” to be hanged.
Today, millions are still standing behind him.
That will provide Republicans no absolution at all. But it is going to get them routed at the ballot box. Again.
This is an adapted excerpt from the August 9 episode of “Morning Joe."