“
“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,” Jack Wilenchik, a Phoenix-based lawyer who helped organize the pro-Trump electors in Arizona, wrote in a Dec. 8, 2020, email to Boris Epshteyn, a strategic adviser for the Trump campaign.
Thousands of Fake Republican Ministers and their Goons are employing Jesus – who there is no history for – to take over this country and destroy the Democrats. I am a real Messenger and Man of God – and Moses. I have the SEVENTY ELDERS guarding my back.
I believe my letter to Senator Wyden had a big impact, being many Republicans around Trump wanted to SIGN THEIR NAME TO A HISTORIC OUTCOME – that was thwarted by VP Pence.
Round up the Enemies of the United States of America!
John of The Holy Spirit of Moses
Justice Dept investigation into Jan. 6 now encompasses communications of allies of Trump – CBS News
The Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, rioting at the U.S. Capitol, now includes questions for witnesses about the communications of people close to then-President Donald Trump and his reelection campaign, CBS News has confirmed.
That news, first reported by The Washington Post, was confirmed to CBS News by a U.S. government official familiar with the investigation and a source with knowledge of what’s been presented by the Justice Department to a grand jury.
It is not evident that Trump himself is a target of the investigation, only that that prosecutors are asking questions related to him and his aides.
Dear Senator Wyden;
I applaud your call for Clarence Thomas to recuse himself. Are you aware Ginni Thomas signed a letter on December 21, 2021 attacking the Jan. 6 Committee, and promised to launch a public campaign to harass Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger – who have received death threats. Are you aware of the Manhattan Declaration that suggests Christians own a right to overthrow our Government if it becomes immoral? This sounds like the Claremont Institute that Ginni wrote for, as did John Easton. Tony Perkins signed the M. Declaration. The Texas Republican party just declared Trump the rightful President, and promised to go after Gays. The message from these funded think tanks is getting to the people, who are up in arms. Investigate what Clarence Thomas was doing when his wife signed that letter. He promised to hurt the LGBTQ people – after he repealed Roe vs. Wade.
“We ask that the GOP conference meet immediately to vote on stripping Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger from their membership in the GOP conference. Add this to the We further inform you that conservative leaders are launching a nationwide movement to add citizens’ voices to this effort. The institute was an early defender of Donald Trump.[3] After Joe Biden won the 2020 election and Donald Trump refused to concede while making claims of fraud, Claremont Institute senior fellow John Eastman aided Trump in his failed attempts to overturn the election results.[4][5] In 2021, the Claremont Institute published an essay written by one of its senior fellows which called for a “counter-revolution” against the “majority of people living in the United States today [who] can no longer be considered fellow citizens”.
“Gonna get your wife. Gonna get your kids,” the caller added.
Other angry voice mails threatened Kinzinger’s mother, while another targeted Cheney. One woman wished Kinzinger suffered.
John Presco President: Royal Rosamond Press
‘Kind of Wild/Creative’: Emails Shed Light on Trump Fake Electors Plan
Previously undisclosed communications among Trump campaign aides and outside advisers provide new insight into their efforts to overturn the election in the weeks leading to Jan. 6.
By Maggie Haberman and Luke Broadwater
July 26, 2022
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Previously undisclosed emails provide an inside look at the increasingly desperate and often slapdash efforts by advisers to President Donald J. Trump to reverse his election defeat in the weeks before the Jan. 6 attack, including acknowledgments that a key element of their plan was of dubious legality and lived up to its billing as “fake.”
The dozens of emails among people connected to the Trump campaign, outside advisers and close associates of Mr. Trump show a particular focus on assembling lists of people who would claim — with no basis — to be Electoral College electors on his behalf in battleground states that he had lost.
In emails reviewed by The New York Times and authenticated by people who had worked with the Trump campaign at the time, one lawyer involved in the detailed discussions repeatedly used the word “fake” to refer to the so-called electors, who were intended to provide Vice President Mike Pence and Mr. Trump’s allies in Congress a rationale for derailing the congressional process of certifying the outcome. And lawyers working on the proposal made clear they knew that the pro-Trump electors they were putting forward might not hold up to legal scrutiny.
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“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,” Jack Wilenchik, a Phoenix-based lawyer who helped organize the pro-Trump electors in Arizona, wrote in a Dec. 8, 2020, email to Boris Epshteyn, a strategic adviser for the Trump campaign.
In a follow-up email, Mr. Wilenchik wrote that “‘alternative’ votes is probably a better term than ‘fake’ votes,” adding a smiley face emoji.
The emails provide new details of how a wing of the Trump campaign worked with outside lawyers and advisers to organize the elector plan and pursue a range of other options, often with little thought to their practicality. One email showed that many of Mr. Trump’s top advisers were informed of problems naming Trump electors in Michigan — a state he had lost — because pandemic rules had closed the state Capitol building where the so-called electors had to gather.
The emails show that participants in the discussions reported details of their activities to Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, and in at least one case to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff. Around the same time, according to the House committee investigating Jan. 6, Mr. Meadows emailed another campaign adviser saying, “We just need to have someone coordinating the electors for states.”
Many of the emails went to Mr. Epshteyn, who was acting as a coordinator for people inside and outside the Trump campaign and the White House and remains a close aide to Mr. Trump.
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Mr. Epshteyn, the emails show, was a regular point of contact for John Eastman, the lawyer whose plan for derailing congressional certification of the Electoral College result on Jan. 6, 2021, was embraced by Mr. Trump.
Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings
Card 1 of 9
Making a case against Trump. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack is laying out evidence that could allow prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump, though the path to a criminal trial is uncertain. Here are the main themes that have emerged so far:
An unsettling narrative. During the first hearing, the committee described in vivid detail what it characterized as an attempted coup orchestrated by the former president that culminated in the assault on the Capitol. At the heart of the gripping story were three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.
Creating election lies. In its second hearing, the panel showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers as he declared victory prematurely and relentlessly pressed claims of fraud he was told were wrong. “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said of Mr. Trump during a videotaped interview.
Pressuring Pence. Mr. Trump continued pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing. The committee showed how Mr. Trump’s actions led his supporters to storm the Capitol, sending Mr. Pence fleeing for his life.
Fake elector plan. The committee used its fourth hearing to detail how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors. The panel also presented fresh details on how the former president leaned on state officials to invalidate his defeat, opening them up to violent threats when they refused.
Strong arming the Justice Dept. During the fifth hearing, the panel explored Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging and relentless scheme to misuse the Justice Department to keep himself in power. The panel also presented evidence that at least half a dozen Republican members of Congress sought pre-emptive pardons.
The surprise hearing. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, delivered explosive testimony during the panel’s sixth session, saying that the president knew the crowd on Jan. 6 was armed, but wanted to loosen security. She also painted Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, as disengaged and unwilling to act as rioters approached the Capitol.
Planning a march. Mr. Trump planned to lead a march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 but wanted it to look spontaneous, the committee revealed during its seventh hearing. Representative Liz Cheney also said that Mr. Trump had reached out to a witness in the panel’s investigation, and that the committee had informed the Justice Department of the approach.
A “complete dereliction” of duty. In the final public hearing of the summer, the panel accused the former president of dereliction of duty for failing to act to stop the Capitol assault. The committee documented how, over 187 minutes, Mr. Trump had ignored pleas to call off the mob and then refused to say the election was over even a day after the attack.
Mr. Epshteyn not only fielded and passed along to Mr. Giuliani the detailed proposal for Jan. 6 prepared by Mr. Eastman, he also handled questions about how to pay Mr. Eastman and made the arrangements for him to visit the White House on Jan. 4, 2021, the emails show.
That was the day of the Oval Office meeting in which Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman unsuccessfully pressured Mr. Pence to adopt the plan — an exchange witnessed by Mr. Pence’s two top aides, Marc Short and Greg Jacob, both of whom testified last week to the federal grand jury investigating the assault on the Capitol and what led to it.
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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Some of the participants also expressed approval in the emails for keeping some of their activities out of the public eye.
For instance, after Mr. Trump hosted Pennsylvania state legislators at the White House in late November to discuss reversing the election outcome, Mr. Epshteyn celebrated when news of the meeting didn’t quickly leak. “The WH meeting hasn’t been made public, which is both shocking and great,” he wrote to Ms. Ellis.
On Dec. 8, 2020, Mr. Wilenchik wrote that Kelli Ward, one of the Republicans in Arizona participating in the fake electors plan, recommended trying “to keep it under wraps until Congress counts the vote Jan. 6th (so we can try to ‘surprise’ the Dems and media with it) — I tend to agree with her.”
Mr. Epshteyn, Mr. Wilenchik, Mr. Roman, Mr. Eastman, Ms. Bobb and James Troupis, another lawyer involved in the plan, either declined to comment or did not respond to emails or calls seeking comment.
Mr. Marks, in an email, disputed that there was anything inappropriate or improper at work.
“I do not believe there was anything ‘fake’ or illegal about the alternate slates of delegates, and particularly Pennsylvania,” he said. “There was a history of alternate slates from Hawaii in 1960. Nothing was secret about this — they were provided to the National Archives, as I understand the procedure, and then it was up to Congress to decide what to do.”
Mr. Marks added: “I had no involvement with Professor Eastman’s advice regarding the vice president’s role, which I only learned about after the fact, and do not support.”
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The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has produced evidence that Mr. Trump was aware of the electors plan. Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said in a deposition to the panel that Mr. Trump had called her and put Mr. Eastman on the phone “to talk about the importance of the R.N.C. helping the campaign gather these contingent electors.”
The panel has also heard testimony from Mr. Jacob, who was Mr. Pence’s counsel in the White House, that Mr. Eastman admitted in the Jan. 4 Oval Office meeting — with Mr. Trump present — that his plan to have Mr. Pence obstruct the electoral certification violated the Electoral Count Act.
The emails show less than lawyerly precision at times. Mr. Marks repeatedly referred to Cleta Mitchell, another lawyer helping Mr. Trump, as “Clita” and “Clavita,” prompting Mr. Epshteyn to reply: “It’s Cleta, not Clavita.”
Another time, Mr. Epshteyn wrote to Mr. Marks: “Do you mean Arizona when you say Nevada???”
By early December, Mr. Epshteyn was seemingly helping to coordinate the efforts, conferring repeatedly with Mr. Marks and others. Mr. Wilenchik told his fellow lawyers he had been discussing an idea proposed by still another lawyer working with the campaign, Kenneth Chesebro, an ally of Mr. Eastman’s, to submit slates of electors loyal to Mr. Trump.
“His idea is basically that all of us (GA, WI, AZ, PA, etc.) have our electors send in their votes (even though the votes aren’t legal under federal law — because they’re not signed by the Governor); so that members of Congress can fight about whether they should be counted on January 6th,” Mr. Wilenchik wrote in the email on Dec. 8, 2020, to Mr. Epshteyn and half a dozen other people.
“Kind of wild/creative — I’m happy to discuss,” Mr. Wilenchik continued. “My comment to him was that I guess there’s no harm in it, (legally at least) — i.e. 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.”
Rosamond Press 