Lawyer group asks court to punish perpetrator of Trump voter scheme
On Wednesday, several dozen prominent legal figures filed an ethics complaint with the New York Supreme Court Attorneys’ Grievance Board, calling Chesebro “the apparent mastermind behind key aspects of the fake voter scheme.” and accusing him of conspiring “with Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Eastman and others to overthrow our democracy.
The complaint said Chesebro acted with “dishonesty, fraud, deception, or reckless or intentional misrepresentation” in violation of rules of conduct for attorneys who, like him, are licensed to practice in New York.
The request was organized by Lawyers Defending American Democracy. A similar request by the group contributed to the suspension of Giuliani’s law license in June 2021 and the continued investigation of the California State Bar into Eastman. The complaint against Chesebro did not explicitly ask that he lose his license but asked for an investigation and “appropriate penalties”.
Adam S. Kaufmann, a Chesebro attorney, condemned the lawsuit against his client, warning that it was dangerous to attack attorneys for providing legal theories to political candidates. Drawing on precedent from 1960 involving a close vote in Hawaii, he said Chesebro was offering the Trump campaign advice to “keep its options open” until Jan. 6 as a “contingency” in case the courts find a solution. electoral fraud in one of the swings. States where Trump’s team disputed the result.
The idea that Pence could delay or block the Jan. 6 vote count was a key part of the events that led to the attack on Capitol Hill by Trump supporters. Some of those supporters chanted “Hang Mike Pence” because the vice president – whose lawyers told him there was no legal basis for him to delay or void official votes certified by the state for Biden – rejected Trump’s push to do it anyway.
On November 18, 2020, Chesebro wrote the first known memo offering a proposal for a list of Trump supporters to claim to be voters, in this case for Wisconsin. He expanded the proposal to other states, including in a letter to Giuliani on December 13, 2020.
An email from a Trump campaign lawyer in Arizona on Dec. 8, 2020, cited Chesebro as having come up with the idea of “sending ‘fake’ election votes to Pence,” even though they wouldn’t be legal. because the governor had not signed them.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday called Chesebro a participant and not just a purveyor of theories, referring to his aiding a fake voter effort in Georgia, one of the swing states Biden won. Chesebro fought a subpoena to testify before a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, where a prosecutor is investigating efforts to nullify election results there.
Kaufmann said the only communication Chesebro had with anyone in Georgia regarding alternate voters was sending ballot forms to a Republican leader in the state.
Eastman penned two memos outlining steps that could result in Trump being declared the winner of the election that hinged on a disputed claim about Pence and surrogate “voters.” Chesebro helped edit the first emails obtained by the January 6 committee broadcast.
The complaint states that “although Mr. Eastman and Mr. Giuliani received more attention, the public record amply demonstrates Mr. Chesebro’s pivotal role. As the original author of the bogus voter scheme, Mr. Chesebro bears particular responsibility for it and its consequences.
In an email exchange with Eastman on Dec. 24, 2020, Chesebro also wrote that the odds of Supreme Court intervention would “become more favorable if the justices begin to fear there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6. unless they rule by then, anyway.
Another organization, The 65 Project, filed a similar ethics complaint against Chesebro in July. The group has filed complaints against about 55 attorneys associated with aspects of Trump’s efforts to nullify the election. There have been no public signs of action in response to its complaint against Chesebro, but its manager, Michael Teeter, said Wednesday that an investigator had been assigned to him.
The new filing was singled out by a list of high-profile legal figures who endorsed it, such as former presidents of the New York State Bar Association and the American Bar Association, judges retired, current and former deans of major law schools and other jurists and eminent lawyers.
