Texts show Trump advisers' plot to use false electors to 'flip states'

Lansing — In text messages, officials within then-President Donald Trump's campaign and lawyers laid out detailed plans for how Republicans posing as battleground states' electors could spur lawmakers or Vice President Mike Pence to alter the outcome of the 2020 election, tossing aside millions of votes for Democrat Joe Biden.

Some Trump allies have argued, for three years, that the false electoral certificates simply provided a legal lifeline in case a court reversed Trump's loss, so then, and only then, the GOP slates could be recognized. But Trump aides' own text messages — more than 400 pages of them were obtained by the Michigan Attorney General's office and reviewed by The Detroit News — painted a different picture.

On Dec. 31, 2020, lawyer John Eastman, who was assisting the Trump campaign, told Boris Epshteyn, one of Trump's top advisers, that if Pence rejected electoral votes from the seven states that Biden won but where Republicans submitted alternate electors, "Trump wins 232 to 222."

"OK got it," Epshteyn replied.

Then, lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who was leading the Trump campaign's planning around the false electors, added, "The math sounds tough, but that's why it's so key that all the electors voted on Dec. 14 — it allows us to flip states, not just tie them up to deny them to Biden."

Chesebro then discussed winning one state through a court decision, getting lawmakers in Georgia to appoint Republican electors for their state and then denying "any counting of votes on one or two others."

Biden got more than 13 million votes in the seven states that Eastman, Epshteyn and Chesebro were discussing in the text messages. The Democrat won some of the states by less than 1 percentage point, like Georgia, but the margin was larger in others, like New Mexico, where Biden won by about 10 points.

Earlier on Christmas day, Dec. 25, 2020, Chesebro sent a lengthy message about options Pence had for how to handle the vote counting, including one he described as "radical": simply gaveling "Trump as elected."

"Is Pence really likely to be on board with this?" Eastman replied to the various options.

"Let's keep this off text for now," Epshteyn then said.

"Options are clear I think," Epshteyn added.

Epshteyn declined to provide a comment for this story. Chesebro didn't reply to a request for comment. And a lawyer for Eastman didn't immediately respond.

As vice president, Pence presided over the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, when the electoral votes from the states were counted. It's the vice president's job to open "the votes of the states in alphabetical order" and hand them to tellers who announce the results, according to the National Archives.

Pence ultimately didn't go along with the plans described in the private messages by Trump's advisers, and Biden's Electoral College victory was approved by Congress despite the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.

On Dec. 13, 2020 — before the Republican electors met in the seven states on Dec. 14, 2020 — Chesebro texted Epshteyn, laying out a strategy focused on Pence.

Chesebro said the GOP meetings on Dec. 14, 2020, set up "the possibility" of Pence not counting votes from "any state where there are two slates and there was never careful, deliberate hearings on the merits, with evidence, on asserted irregularities either in a court or the Legislature."

"Only Supreme Court could override that (cuz he'd refuse to open the envelopes of the six states unless court orders him, at minimum buying time)," Chesebro texted.

That's strikingly different than the GOP electors serving as a mere contingency that would come into play if the courts eventually reversed the outcome in battleground states. When Chesebro wrote an introductory email to Kathy Berden, one of Michigan's 16 Republican electors on Dec. 10, 2020, Chesebro included a statement about Wisconsin's rationale for submitting a certificate claiming Trump had won.

"... (T)he Republican electors should meet this year on Dec. 14 as we await a final resolution in Wisconsin," the statement said.

His email to Berden didn't mention the idea of Pence simply not counting any of the electoral votes from Michigan or Wisconsin.

An ongoing investigation

Berden, a retired farmer from Snover, is one of the 16 Michigan Republican electors who signed the certificate on Dec. 14, 2020, falsely claiming that Trump had won Michigan's 16 electoral votes.

In fact, the Board of State Canvassers had already certified Biden's victory. He won the state 51%-48% by more than 154,000 votes. About 2.8 million people voted for Biden in Michigan.

Attorney General Dana Nessel's office brought eight felony charges, including forgery allegations, against each of the Michigan GOP electors in July. An Ingham County judge is currently weighing whether to allow the cases to proceed to trial.

On Wednesday, Berden's lawyer, George Donnini, told The News the false certificate was a "contingent" document based on something happening to change the result between Dec. 14, 2020, and Jan. 6, 2021.

"Now, that didn't happen, but that doesn't matter," Donnini said, before adding, "Something could have happened."

That's potentially significant to the defense because it gets to whether the document was an actual forgery and whether the GOP electors had an intent to defraud the people of Michigan.

Donnini also suggested in court this week that Berden felt misled and that a Trump campaign official named Mike Roman, who helped orchestrate the false elector certificates in multiple states, should have been charged instead of the GOP electors themselves. Roman privately opposed the idea of including conditional language in the certificates that would have made clear the GOP electors were only a legal contingency.

Roman's lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, didn't respond this week to a request for comment.

Testifying in court, Howard Shock, a special agent for Nessel's office, described Roman, Chesebro and Trump himself as unindicted co-conspirators in the false electors plot.

'Gavel him and Trump elected'

Roman, Eastman, Epshteyn and Rudy Giuliani, who was Trump's personal lawyer, were among a group of 18 Trump allies who were indicted by a grand jury in Arizona this week for their roles in the push to reverse the results of the 2020 election.

The text messages, reviewed by The News, point to all four individuals' involvement in the planning for the GOP slates' submission to Congress over a period of weeks.

On Dec. 29, 2020, Epshteyn asked Eastman and Chesebro what would happen if the House and Senate voted differently on which electoral slate to recognize. Chesebro replied that the scenario would likely lead to Biden winning.

"So Pence," Eastman replied, likely referring to the vice president's influence over the vote counting.

"Yep, Pence," Epshteyn then added.

On Dec. 31, 2020, Epshteyn asked Chesebro to update a legal memo with recommendations related to what would occur if no candidate hit the 270 electoral vote threshold.

"My 2 cents on updating that memo: Maybe include the scenario where Pence rushes through and gavels him and Trump elected to make other options look more moderate," Chesebro said. "But even though more constitutionally principled, I don't see how it could be accepted as a legitimate outcome politically."

Weeks earlier, on Dec. 12, 2020, Epshteyn asked Chesebro in a text message thread, featuring Roman, "Does VP have ultimate authority on which slate of electors should be chosen?"

Chesebro replied, "A very good argument can be made that the president of the Senate both opens and counts the vote."

On Dec. 12, 2020, Epshteyn said to Chesebro and Roman that he had briefed the mayor, apparently referring to Giuliani, on their discussion. "When you have time, without taking focus off Monday, a memo on VP's powers during joint session would be vital to have."

In a statement earlier this week, Ted Goodman, a political adviser to Giuliani, said the "continued weaponization of our justice system should concern all Michiganders and Americans."

'Why did Pence do this?'

Chesebro, a lawyer from Massachusetts, had been working on election-related litigation in Wisconsin with former Wisconsin Judge Jim Troupis when Troupis connected Chesebro with the Trump campaign.

In a Nov. 25, 2020, email, Troupis sent Justin Clark, a Trump lawyer, a memo that Chesebro had written, suggesting the date for settling a state's electoral votes was Jan. 6, 2021, not Dec. 14, 2020.

By Dec. 10, 2020, Epshteyn connected Chesebro with Giuliani for them to chat that evening.

Chesebro's private messages show that he was focused on altering the results of the 2020 election, beginning just days after it occurred. On Nov. 9, 2020, a Twitter account Chesebro used called BadgerPundit sent a direct message to Vicki McKenna, a conservative radio host in Wisconsin, saying the Republican electors needed to meet on Dec. 14, 2020.

"As long as the legislature makes findings by the end of December that the Nov. 3 vote was irregular and invalid, and the Trump electoral votes should be counted in Congress, that should be enough for the Biden votes not to be counted," BadgerPundit wrote to McKenna.

But in a 2023 interview with investigators with Nessel's office, Chesebro described his views differently, saying he was advising the Trump campaign to organize the electoral slates in case the campaign won lawsuits that changed the results of the election. The Detroit News reviewed a recording of the interview.

"I thought I was educating them about this is extremely important to have alternate electors vote because if you win the litigation challenge after Dec. 14, Congress can't constitutionally count those votes in your column," Chesebro said.

His text and social media messages detailed Chesebro traveling to Washington, D.C., ahead of Jan. 6, 2021, and working on the electors strategy even then, despite the Trump campaign not having won lawsuits that altered the results.

He messaged a photo of himself in front of the Capitol on Jan. 4, 2021, to McKenna.

"I've opted not to storm the Capitol," Chesebro messaged.

Then, he added, "At least not this day."

On Jan. 7, 2021, a day after the riot at the Capitol, Chesebro provided Epshteyn with his thoughts on what he described as "damage control" for the Trump campaign.

"Maybe, they're all in hiding, but it'd be nice if Trump surrogates get across that without Antifa's role in the actual breaking in, plus Capitol security ... the scene at the Capitol would have been entirely peaceful," Chesebro claimed.

Chesebro also said "Pence is a lot to blame for this fiasco."

Pence wasn't "up front" with Trump, Chesebro said.

"If he had been up front, Trump would have known he had no chance to win other than win in the courts or state legislatures before Jan. 6," Chesebro added. "If I'm right, Pence gave him false hope.

"He allowed Trump to hear valid legal theories from Rudy and Eastman which gave him hope, which was crushed when Pence suddenly crushed them at the end. Why did Pence do this?"

Some of the participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot chanted, "Hang Mike Pence," during the event.

cmauger@detroitnews.com