Trump's stolen election legal strategy Dec-Jan 2020

A fascinating NYT article, Trump Lawyer Acknowledged Political Agenda in Election Suit, Emails Show, describes the legal reasoning that Kenneth Chesebro and other DJT attorneys were discussing before DJT's 1/6 coup attempt. The emails here are evidence in the RICO case in Georgia against DJT and 18 other people, one of which the Kraken (Sidney Powell) who agreed to a plead deal to stay out of jail. 

The bottom line is that the lawyers thought that overturning or stopping the 2020 election in court would fail, but that by filing lawsuits there would be political value in creating a false impression among DJT's supporters that the courts were corrupted and Democrats had rigged the election. The NYT writes:

Kenneth Chesebro’s comments undercut assertions that Donald J. Trump’s lawyers were simply providing legal advice in challenging the 2020 results

On Dec. 24, 2020, Kenneth Chesebro and other lawyers fighting to reverse President Donald J. Trump’s election defeat were debating whether to file litigation contesting Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in Wisconsin, a key swing state.

Mr. Chesebro argued there was little doubt that the litigation would fail in court — he put the odds of winning at “1 percent” — as Mr. Trump continued to push his baseless claims of widespread fraud, according to emails reviewed by The New York Times.

But the “relevant analysis,” Mr. Chesebro argued, “is political.”

Mr. Chesebro’s lawyers have argued that his work was shielded by the First Amendment and that he “acted within his capacity as a lawyer.” They have called for his case to be dismissed, saying he was merely “researching and finding precedents in order to form a legal opinion, which was then supplied to his client, the Trump campaign.”

Mr. Trump has also signaled that one of his possible defenses is that he was simply acting on the advice of his lawyers.

But Mr. Chesebro’s emails could undercut any effort to show that the lawyers were focused solely on legal strategies. Rather than considering just the law and the facts of the case, Mr. Chesebro made clear he was considering politics and was well aware of how the Trump campaign’s legal filings could be used as ammunition for Republicans’ efforts to overturn the results when Congress met to certify the Electoral College outcome on Jan. 6, 2021.

“Just getting this on file means that on Jan. 6, the court will either have ruled on the merits or, vastly more likely, will have appeared to dodge again,” Mr. Chesebro wrote in the email chain. He added that a lack of action by the Supreme Court would feed “the impression that the courts lacked the courage to fairly and timely consider these complaints, and justifying a political argument on Jan. 6 that none of the electoral votes from the states with regard to which the judicial process has failed should be counted.”

Mr. Chesebro wrote that it was “hard to have enormous optimism about what will happen on Jan. 6, but a lot can happen in the 13 days left until then, and I think having as many states under review both judicially and in state legislatures as possible is ideal.”

He said the legal filings could produce a “political payoff” to bolster the argument that “there should at least be extended debate in Congress about election irregularities in each state.” He added that “the public should come away from this believing that the election in Wisconsin was likely rigged, and stolen by Biden and Harris, who were not legitimately elected.”

Responding to the email chain was John Eastman, the conservative lawyer who has also been charged in the Georgia election case. Mr. Eastman said he believed the legal arguments were “rock solid” but the odds of success were “not based on the legal merits, but an assessment of the justices’ spines. And I understand that there is a heated fight underway.”

Mr. Chesebro responded: “I particularly agree that getting this on file gives more ammo to the justices fighting for the court to intervene. I think the odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way.”

A key point here is that the attorneys knew the election was not stolen, but they wanted to create a false reality of a stolen election in the minds of as many of DJT's supporters as possible. Apparently they did a darn good job. 

Chesebro tried to keep the email out of court, but the judge ruled that the emails are admissible in court under the crime-fraud exception because probable cause had been established that the correspondence or lawyer’s advice (normally shielded from discovery and kept out of court) was used in furtherance of a crime.

What those attorneys were trying to do amounts to treason in my opinion, but that's not how the law  sees it. One can hope that Chesebro gets convicted and spends at least 20 years in jail. The cadre of treasonous stolen election lawyers caused enormous damage to this country.