Former President Donald Trump's legal team believed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be their "only chance" to stop President Joe Biden from winning the 2020 presidential election, according to newly disclosed emails obtained by Politico.
"We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt," Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro wrote in a Dec. 31, 2020 email to the rest of the legal team.
Supreme Court justices are responsible for handling emergency matters in individual states, and Thomas is assigned to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Georgia. Trump's legal team was aware that he would have been the justice to receive any urgent appeals of their lawsuit in that district.
Chesebro added that Thomas would be "our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress." Fellow Trump attorney John Eastman, who once clerked for Thomas, agreed and proposed using Thomas to "kick the Georgia legislature into gear" in order to overturn the election results.
The newly discovered correspondences were among eight emails obtained by Politico, which Eastman attempted to withhold from the Jan. 6 select committee. However, a judge ordered the emails to be turned over, citing evidence of likely crimes committed by Trump and Eastman. The messages have not yet been publicly released.
And here's the email between Eastman, Chesebro and other lawyers discussing their hopes for Justice Thomas. https://t.co/i1qHUEpRxs pic.twitter.com/ROinklFwuF
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) November 2, 2022
Circuit judges are often the first stage of appeal, and in a situation like this, their rulings are a way to temporarily halt a presidential confirmation before the full Supreme Court weighs in. However, Trump's attorneys hoped that a favorable ruling from Thomas would have prompted Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence to stop the final certification of Biden as president.
"[I]f we can just get this case pending before the Supreme Court by Jan. 5, ideally with something positive written by a judge or justice, hopefully Thomas, I think it's our best shot at holding up the count of a state in Congress," Chesebro wrote in a December 31 email.
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"Hard to have enormous optimism about what will happen on Jan. 6, but a lot can happen in the 13 days left until then," Chesebro added in a message to attorney Justin Clark on Dec. 24, 2020. "I think having as many states still under review (both judicially and in state legislatures) as possible is ideal." It is not clear whether Clark responded to this message.
Eastman has an extensive history with Thomas and frequently communicated with his wife, Ginni, in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6. He also suggested to Pence's staff on Jan. 4 and 5 that Thomas would support their administration's efforts, and pressured Pence to block the election certification on Jan. 6.
In 12/30 email, part of a batch that was turned over to the committee on different grounds than "crime-fraud," Chesebro makes another notable admission:
They wanted courts to declare Jan. 6 matters "political" / nonjusticiable to give Pence free rein.https://t.co/i1qHUEpRxs pic.twitter.com/ba8pGNOfmH
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) November 2, 2022
The recently disclosed emails also reveal Trump's lawyers' concerns that the former president may find himself in legal trouble if he attested to voter fraud data in a Dec. 31, 2020 lawsuit challenging election results in Georgia.
"I have no doubt that an aggressive DA or US Atty someplace will go after both the President and his lawyers once all the dust settles on this," Eastman wrote in an email to Alex Kaufman and Kurt Hilbert, the other private attorneys working on the Trump election case.
Email exchanges between the attorneys and Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann show that they agreed to remove specific numbers from the lawsuit before Trump swore to its accuracy. They also questioned whether their federal case should include voter fraud data that had been disproved in an earlier state lawsuit.
"I know it is late in the day, but do we need to incorporate that complaint by reference?" Eastman asked the other attorneys. In a separate email chain, Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell worried that they would not be able to get the president to sign and notarize the document in time to file the lawsuit.
"So, now what? Can we figure out a way to file this without a verification?" Mitchell asked. Several other attorneys, including attorney Chris Gardner, wondered how to file the suit on time in emails sent on New Year's Eve.
"I don't know how we file without it," he wrote. "Presidential trip to a UPS store?"
The assistant executive clerk for the White House, William McCathran, ultimately attested to Trump's signature, which ended up being the key piece of evidence in U.S. District Court Judge David Carter's Oct. 19 ruling that the emails be disclosed to the Jan. 6 committee. Trump signed the verification despite being aware that many of the fraud claims cited in the lawsuit were not true, according to Carter.
"President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong," Carter wrote, "but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public."
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