Today we’re publishing the second installment in our series on the Ken Chesebro document trove. Today’s piece provides a detailed look at just where ideas like fake electors and the central purported role of then-Vice President Mike Pence came from. And far more than almost anyone seems to have realized they started with Ken Chesebro. Even ideas and strategies associated with the so-called ‘Eastman Memo’ appear to have begun with him. In today’s piece Josh Kovensky provides never before reported details on how Chesebro found his way into the Trump orbit in the first days after Biden’s victory and how he became the key idea man behind what we might call Stop The Steal Thought.
The various conspiracy theories about voter fraud – both mundane and unhinged – were never Chesebro’s thing, though his theory did rely on them as the notional ‘disputes’ which his delaying tactics were purportedly intended to allow debates over. But it was Chesebro, seemingly alone in the shambling yet focused world of Trump Dead-enders whose mind could take in the totality and full frameworks and machinery of constitution and statute law and zero in on the best places to grind its gears to a halt.
I should note that Chesebro’s centrality to the coup attempt is a theory and argument our team has been advancing for a couple years. Indeed, the only on-the-record interview Chesebro has ever done on Jan. 6th and Trump coup was with TPM’s Josh Kovensky – the reporter on this series – back in June of 2022. You can read that here. But the trove has the details that finally put the question beyond dispute.
Read the second installment here.
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