1 Wisconsin state charge: Kenneth John Chesebro (/ˈtʃɛzbroʊ/ CHEZ-broh;[2] born June 5, 1961[3]) is an American attorney known as the architect of the Trump fake electors plot[4] that conspired to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
[6] As part of his plea bargain, Chesebro accepted five years of probation, $5,000 in restitution, 100 hours of community service, and agreed to testify against Donald Trump and the remaining defendants.
[9] He earned a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in the class of 1986 that included Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan and Jeffrey Toobin.
That year, along with John Eastman, he filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in a case involving citizenship of residents of American Samoa.
[10] Chesebro skewered the "Reagan Administration ideologues and their colleagues in Congress" in a 1993 article in the American University Law Review.
By December 6 the strategy covered all six "contested" states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), and included a possible challenge to the constitutionality of the Electoral Count Act, on the grounds that the constitution gave the leader of the Senate the duty to both open and count the electoral college votes.
While the outcome of the strategy is not described as a guaranteed (immediate) Trump victory, the alternative is winning time for litigation and at the very least drawing public opinion to "evidence of electoral abuses by the Democrats."
[18] Focused on challenging the Wisconsin vote, Chesebro argued in the November 18 memo that "the Presidential election timetable affords ample time for judicial proceedings."
The Times called the December 6 memo "a missing piece in the public record of how Mr. Trump's allies developed their strategy" to overturn the election.
Chesebro concluded the memo saying "Given the possible upside of having the Trump-Pence electors meet to vote on December 14, it seems advisable for the campaign to seriously consider this course of action and, if adopted, to carefully plan related messaging.
In an article for Just Security, Tribe complained: "Chesebro completely misused part of the latest edition of my constitutional law treatise.
He argued that a vice president who has just run for re-election has a conflict of interest, and he suggested that instead Chuck Grassley or another senior senate Republican should assume the role of certification.
[23][24] On March 28, 2022, Judge David O. Carter, after considering Chesebro's email during a court case, ruled: "President Trump's team transformed a legal interpretation of the Electoral Count Act into a day-by-day plan of action.
The U.S. House select committee on the January 6 attack concluded that Chesebro had sent the December 13 memo "upon request from Trump Campaign official Boris Epshteyn."
Judge Carter found that the "draft memo pushed a strategy that knowingly violated the Electoral Count Act" and "is both intimately related to and clearly advanced the plan to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021."
[27]On December 23, 2020, Trump campaign attorney John Eastman emailed Boris Epshteyn an attachment called "PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL – Dec. 23 memo on Jan. 6 scenario."
[29] This committee concluded that he was the chief architect of the fake electors scheme used by Trump and his allies in an attempt to stay in power after losing the 2020 presidential election.
[42] On October 10, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis argued that attorney-client privilege should not apply because the documents did not advise Trump on litigation but rather gave him a political strategy to use in Congress to interrupt the transfer of power to Biden.
[43] On October 20, as jury selection began for his speedy trial, Chesebro took a last-minute plea deal, including a single felony count of conspiracy to file false documents.
[44] In 2024, as a consequence of his guilty plea in Georgia, he was suspended from practicing law in the state of New York, with the possibility of permanent disbarment left open.
A year earlier, he had pleaded guilty to a felony in his criminal indictment in Fulton County, Georgia, over his efforts to overturn Trump's election loss in that state.
Some former colleagues suggest this newfound wealth triggered his dramatic life-style change; he began to travel extensively, bought houses, divorced, and started donating to Republicans.