JIM MURPHY'S LETTER - KIM FOXX IS A PIECE OF CRAP AND HELPING LORI LIGHTWEIGHT KILL OUR CITY

 Twenty-five years ago, I was given the opportunity and the privilege to work for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office as an Assistant State’s Attorney. This was my dream job. Like each of you, I came here to do good. To represent victims of crime and their families. To be a voice for the voiceless. To do the right thing. To do justice. Those aren’t merely words, they are a way of life.

7/29/22 was my last day as an Assistant State’s Attorney. I was fortunate enough to participate in my final murder jury trial as an ASA, alongside two amazing trial partners. We were able to get some semblance of justice and closure for the family of a single mother who was gunned down in a cell phone store in front of her two kids.

It is beyond difficult to say goodbye to an Office that I truly love, to all of my colleagues and friends and the ASAs I’ve worked with over the years and to those I’ve supervised. To all of the support staff who have stood with me throughout the years. I have been blessed to have had some incredible supervisors like John Dillon, Darren O’Brien, Ashley Romito and, more recently, Natosha Toller. They exemplified what it meant to be an ASA and the importance of doing the right thing. I have tried to follow in their footsteps. I’ve also been blessed with incredible partners. Way too many to name here. You all have been my family.

I wish I could stay. I would love to continue to fight for the victims of crime and to continue to stand with each of you, especially in the face of the overwhelming crime that is crippling our communities. However, I can no longer work for this Administration. I have zero confidence in their leadership. I am going to look elsewhere for opportunities to make a difference. In addition to saying goodbye to all of you, I wanted to explain some of my reasons for leaving.

I have been thinking about leaving for a while now. Really, the thoughts began back in January of 2021, when the “Safe-T Act” was passed. Seeing this Administration’s involvement in that process was an eye-opening experience for me. To be clear, I am in support of eliminating cash bail- no person should sit in jail solely because they can’t afford to pay for bail. But I never understood the rush on an issue that was so important. I voiced my concerns at the time. And it was in that process that I began to realize that the Administration’s ‘Mission Vision and Values’ was just a PR stunt, just words on a page. Fairness. Accountability. Integrity. Respect. Collaboration. Those words should mean something. They do to me. And I know that they do to you as well. Yet time after time after time this Administration has shown that they don’t live the meaning of those words. Or they don’t care.

Integrity matters. I am proud that I am leaving with my integrity intact. As young ASAs we are taught that the job of a prosecutor is to seek justice, not merely convictions. That is what I have strived to do on all of my cases and I know it is what each of you do on a daily basis. We do this in spite of the many obstacles that have been placed in front of us. Staffing levels are at an all time low and have been for some time. All of the Units and Bureaus have been operating at dangerously low levels. Two person courtrooms and one person courtrooms are the norm. This has been going on for some time and is getting worse by the day. This is not a recent phenomenon. This Administration can claim that this attrition is due to the Covid Era. We all know that is not true.

This Administration routinely claims that they have shifted their focus from prosecuting low level crimes so that they can focus their resources on fighting violent crime and drivers of violence. This is simply not true. If this Administration was truly concerned with effectively fighting violent crime, then they would fully staff those courtrooms and Units. Not create more useless policy positions on the Executive Staff at the expense of hiring more ASAs who can work in the trenches. Meanwhile, the rest of us are overworked, overstressed, and under-resourced. But at least we were allowed to wear jeans in July. Well, those of us not working in courtrooms. That move illustrates how tone-deaf this Administration is. They simply don’t care about the well-being of the ASAs on the front lines.

I cannot continue to work for an Administration I no longer respect. A few months ago, I was summoned into a meeting with the State’s Attorney so she could criticize some bond hearings I did. One involved a massive shootout and the other involved a woman who was walking to the store when she was gunned down in a crossfire. The bond hearings involved gun possession charges only. The State’s Attorney communicated that she was upset because a headline in a newspaper read ‘Man won’t face murder charge under the Safe-T Act.’ The State’s Attorney voiced her concern with the headline and the heat she was getting from her backers and never voiced any concern over the fact that this woman was shot and killed simply walking to the store. And nobody was going to face a murder charge.

That is what is wrong with this Administration. I’ve seen it day after day. How many mass shootings do there have to be before something is done? This Administration is more concerned with political narratives and agendas than with victims and prosecuting violent crime. That is why I can’t stay any longer.

I know that the men and women of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office will continue to do great things for the citizens of Cook County. I am confident that all of you will continue to stand tall and make a difference despite the adversity and obstacles being placed in your way. Thank you for the job that you continue to do. This job is long on stress and hardship and short on gratitude. Thank you for making a difference. Never forget that you do. Each of you. The job that you do matters, even if it doesn’t always feel that way.

I know the last couple of years have been difficult. The Office has been hemorrhaging talent. From seasoned, well-respected veteran prosecutors to many of the younger up-and-coming ASAs. People are leaving in droves. It is clear as to why. It is not because of Covid. My plea to each of you is to keep your heads up and keep going. Keep doing the right thing, the right way. I know all too well the sacrifices you have made and continue to make. All of the nights and weekends and holidays that we give up. Seeing how this Administration treated the likes of Alan Spellberg, Guy Lisuzzo, Jenny Coleman and Natosha Toller is disheartening and demoralizing. But you younger ASAs have so much to look forward to. Don’t get disheartened. Now, more than ever, you’re going to have to lean on each other and be there for each other. Keep trying those cases. Keep being there for those victims and their families, many of whom have lost absolutely everything. And keep being there for each other. It matters more than you will ever truly know.

It has been the honor of a lifetime to have served the people of the State of Illinois alongside each of you. Keep fighting the good fight.

Jim Murphy

MCCONNELL SUCKS

 

Rising GOP anger at Mitch McConnell offers a lesson for Democrats 

 

By Greg Sargent 

Columnist| 

July 29, 2022 at 1:22 p.m. EDT 

 

 

Republicans have staged a carnival of fake outrage ever since Sen. Joe Manchin III announced support for a massive climate and health-care package. Their claim: The West Virginia Democrat and his party double-crossed them by announcing a deal just after Senate Republicans helped pass industrial policy making us competitive with China. 

 

There’s a lesson in this for Democrats: Procedural hardball works. 

 

You can see this in rising GOP anger at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Kentucky Republican, angry lawmakers say, has been too willing to agree to bipartisan deals on legislation — which allowed that alleged double-cross to happen, catching him flat-footed. 

 

CNN reports on new “internal tensions” in the party, with House Republicans faulting McConnell for negligently letting bipartisanship break out on infrastructure, gun control and the Chips and Science Act. That bill invests $280 billion in shoring up the semiconductor industry and in science and technology development, and just passed both houses. 

 

As one House Republican griped to CNN, Senate Republicans are “losing fights because they’re not sticking together.” The bizarre implication: None of them should participate in passing constructive legislation. 

 

Republicans also insist that McConnell got played. He had threatened to tank the chips bill to make Democrats drop their push for a climate bill, and after Manchin temporarily killed that latter effort, McConnell allowed the chips measure to pass this week. 

 

Only hours later, Democrats and Manchin announced a revived deal to spend hundreds of billions on climate change and health-care subsidies. Now Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) seethes that McConnell failed to “follow through” on his threat to kill the chips bill. Other GOP senators ripped McConnell for getting rolled and caught napping. 

 

We know why McConnell keeps letting bipartisanship take place: He’s worried about Senate races in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona. McConnell admitted to reporters that Republicans voted for the gun bill because they’ve “lost ground in suburban areas.” 

 

Regardless, there’s a moral in this story for Democrats: There is often no serious penalty for political hardball, no matter how far it pushes the procedural envelope. 

 

Republicans have strained vigorously to gin up outrage over the Democrats’ procedural handling of all this. House Republicans raged that the Manchin deal required them to sink the chips bill. Senate Republicans held up a measure to provide health care to veterans suffering from burn pit exposure, though there’s some dispute about the motive. And Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) declared the Democrats’ perfidy would make it harder to win GOP support for a bill codifying same-sex marriage. 

 

That’s absurdly revealing: The explicit admission is that the merits of the same-sex marriage bill (and possibly the burn pit bill) are beside the point. If Republicans do sink that measure, it will be because Democrats used their authority under the simple-majority reconciliation process to pass something entirely unrelated to it! 

 

But that aside, here’s the thing: None of that fake outrage will matter in the least. 

 

If anything, that GOP outrage has gotten too much credulous media attention, which has suggested Republicans might have a legitimate gripe. Of course they don’t: Democrats were not obliged to let GOP threats dictate their legislative agenda. And the idea that McConnell’s party has standing to lecture anyone on procedural underhandedness is positively comical. 

 

More important, if Democrats do pass the climate package, Democrats and many independents might see it as energizing in a positive way, and Republicans might get negatively energized by it. But virtually no voters will remember the process that led to it. 

 

Republicans know this. They are turning on McConnell precisely because the procedural details that they’re feigning outrage about didn’t give them an actual political weapon to wield against Democrats, and left them flummoxed instead. 

 

As Brian Beutler writes, when Republicans threaten to withhold votes on unrelated items to dissuade Democrats from passing good legislation, that should stiffen Democrats’ resolve to govern alone wherever necessary, and to own this as a positive. 

 

These sorts of threats are actually becoming a norm among Republicans, as David Dayen notes. That’s another reason for Democrats to shut this game down by not proving susceptible to them. 

 

On the idea that there’s no sense in Democrats letting GOP opposition or outrage dictate what they pass, we already have proof of concept. Democrats failed to pass legislation protecting democracy because Manchin insisted it must be bipartisan and wouldn’t end the filibuster. 

 

So how many voters warmly remember that Democrats judiciously refrained from passing something to uphold the noble principle that partisan legislating is bad? Most probably remember only that Democrats failed to fulfill a major priority — that they were ineffective. 

 

What’s more, if the current episode turns out well — which is far from certain — it will unilaterally align the Democratic Party with major new investments in energy manufacturing jobs in the industrial and Appalachian heartlands, while sidelining the GOP as hostile to solving the most urgent problems of the contemporary era. 

 

Obviously a lot will turn on the execution of those policies. But the process leading up to them won’t matter in the least. If they are a success, being the only party associated with them — even if it meant pulling a fast one on the opposition — will not be a negative. It will be a positive, no matter how angry Republicans get along the way. 

JONI JAM

 

THE MUCH AWAITED RETURN OF CLAUDIA - PAWS CHICAGO BEACH PARTY

 

FUR BALL BEACH PARTY BESTIES

 

Here’s a test to see whether Supreme Court justices are above the law

 

Here’s a test to see whether Supreme Court justices are above the law 

By Jennifer Rubin 

Columnist| 

July 28, 2022 at 10:00 a.m. EDT 

 

The 65 Project, a bipartisan group dedicated to disbarring lawyers who filed frivolous cases related to the 2020 election, or who otherwise participated in the coup attempt, has been very busy in recent months. It filed a series of complaints against advisers of defeated former president Donald Trump, including Jenna Ellis, Boris Epshteyn, Cleta Mitchell, John Eastman and Joseph diGenova, as well as two lawyers who signed on to be fake electors and two lawyers who participated in the events of Jan. 6, 2o21. 

 

Now, the group is making its most ambitious move yet: It is filing a specific demand with the Supreme Court to kick Eastman, the chief architect of the coup plot, out of the elite Supreme Court Bar (lawyers eligible to argue in the highest court). And it has requested that Justice Clarence Thomas recuse himself from the disciplinary proceeding because of the role that Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, played in the 2020 scheme. 

 

The complaint, made available to me before it was filed, states that Eastman “bolstered and amplified” claims not backed by evidence or the law. It also alleges that Eastman “actively participated in an effort to undermine our elections – a scheme that led to the gravest attack on American democracy since the Civil War.” 

 

The complaint describes five “spokes” in the coup plot, all of which included Eastman. They include litigating the 65 bogus lawsuits; arranging slates of phony electors in seven states; pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes; pressuring state lawmakers to overturn votes or rescind electors; and summoning “Trump’s supporters to Washington, D.C. and, having spent months lying to them about fraud and a stolen election, sending them to the Capitol, agitated and armed, to stop the electoral vote count.” 

 

After a detailed review of facts revealed in the Jan. 6 hearings and in reporting, the group argues that Eastman’s conduct warrants expulsion from the Supreme Court Bar as well as the loss of his California legal license. The complaint amounts to a handy guide not only to Eastman’s professional violations, but also to facts that might be the basis for criminal charges in state and federal court. 

 

Michael Teter, the 65 Project’s managing director, tells me, “If Mr. Eastman is allowed to continue to remain a member of the highest court in the United States despite the undisputed facts regarding his actions, the American public’s quickly eroding confidence in the Supreme Court will deteriorate even faster.” 

 

But that’s not even the most intriguing part. Citing the obligation for federal judges to recuse themselves from proceedings in which their impartiality “might reasonably be questioned” or in which the judge has personal bias or knowledge of the facts (including spouses with an interest), the complaint asks the Supreme Court — specifically Justice Thomas — to adhere to the rules (which is not mandatory for justices to follow), since the disciplinary matter concerns “public confidence in the judicial system’s integrity.” 

 

The complaint argues that Ginni Thomas “played a significant role in pursuing many of the same post-election strategies as Mr. Eastman.” It recites her text exchanges with then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and her effort to pressure Arizona lawmakers, including a former Thomas clerk, to overturn the presidential vote. The complaint also notes that Ginni Thomas attended the “Stop the Steal” rally in D.C. on Jan. 6 and later wrote to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) denigrating the House select committee’s investigation of the attack on the Capitol. (Thomas previously stated she only briefly attended the rally.) 

 

The recusal request concludes: 

 

In short, Ms. Thomas participated in the concerted effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election. She supported Mr. Eastman’s efforts and conferred with him as Mr. Eastman engaged in scheme described by a federal court as a likely criminal conspiracy. She used her relationships with several other of Justice Thomas’s former clerks to further push the effort to subvert American democracy. 

At a moment when the Jan. 6 committee is considering issuing a subpoena for Ginni Thomas based on exactly the same set of facts, the complaint raises questions as to why she has not cooperated and why her husband did not recuse himself from Jan. 6-related cases. (Justice Thomas has been roundly criticized for failing to do so when the court ordered the National Archives produce documents to the committee. He was the lone dissenter.) 

Teter argues his complaint is an opportunity for the court to improve its image. A decision by Justice Thomas to recuse himself from the matter, he says, would be “an important first step toward the Court’s regaining some of its legitimacy.” 

 

The court might not entertain the complaint or the recusal request. But if it chooses to ignore them, new questions about its integrity inevitably will arise. As for Ginni Thomas, both the Justice Department and Jan. 6 select committee should hear from her. Her refusal to talk to the committee is as egregious as her husband’s failure to recuse himself. It’s time to test whether a Supreme Court justice and his wife are above the law. 

PAWS CHICAGO BEACH PARTY AT NAVY PIER TONIGHT - TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE

 

iIF THESE CROOKED TRAITORS DON'T GO TO JAIL, MERRICK GARLAND SHOULD KILL HIMSELF

 

‘Kind of Wild/Creative’: Emails Shed Light on Trump Fake Electors Plan

Previously undisclosed communications among Trump campaign aides and outside advisers provide new insight into their efforts to overturn the election in the weeks leading to Jan. 6.

One Arizona Republican involved in the effort to reverse the election outcome advocated keeping a key element of the strategy quiet “so we can try to ‘surprise’ the Dems and media with it” on Jan. 6, 2021.Credit...Ash Ponders for The New York Times

By Maggie Haberman and Luke Broadwater

July 26, 2022Updated 2:15 p.m. ET

Previously undisclosed emails provide an inside look at the increasingly desperate and often slapdash efforts by advisers to President Donald J. Trump to reverse his election defeat in the weeks before the Jan. 6 attack, including acknowledgments that a key element of their plan was of dubious legality and lived up to its billing as “fake.”

The dozens of emails among people connected to the Trump campaign, outside advisers and close associates of Mr. Trump show a particular focus on assembling lists of people who would claim — with no basis — to be Electoral College electors on his behalf in battleground states that he had lost.

In emails reviewed by The New York Times and authenticated by people who had worked with the Trump campaign at the time, one lawyer involved in the detailed discussions repeatedly used the word “fake” to refer to the so-called electors, who were intended to provide Vice President Mike Pence and Mr. Trump’s allies in Congress a rationale for derailing the congressional process of certifying the outcome. And lawyers working on the proposal made clear they knew that the pro-Trump electors they were putting forward might not hold up to legal scrutiny.

 

“We would just be sending in ‘fake’ electoral votes to Pence so that ‘someone’ in Congress can make an objection when they start counting votes, and start arguing that the ‘fake’ votes should be counted,” Jack Wilenchik, a Phoenix-based lawyer who helped organize the pro-Trump electors in Arizona, wrote in a Dec. 8, 2020, email to Boris Epshteyn, a strategic adviser for the Trump campaign.

In a follow-up email, Mr. Wilenchik wrote that “‘alternative’ votes is probably a better term than ‘fake’ votes,” adding a smiley face emoji.

The emails provide new details of how a wing of the Trump campaign worked with outside lawyers and advisers to organize the elector plan and pursue a range of other options, often with little thought to their practicality. One email showed that many of Mr. Trump’s top advisers were informed of problems naming Trump electors in Michigan — a state he had lost — because pandemic rules had closed the state Capitol building where the so-called electors had to gather.

The emails show that participants in the discussions reported details of their activities to Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, and in at least one case to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff. Around the same time, according to the House committee investigating Jan. 6, Mr. Meadows emailed another campaign adviser saying, “We just need to have someone coordinating the electors for states.”

Many of the emails went to Mr. Epshteyn, who was acting as a coordinator for people inside and outside the Trump campaign and the White House and remains a close aide to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Epshteyn, the emails show, was a regular point of contact for John Eastman, the lawyer whose plan for derailing congressional certification of the Electoral College result on Jan. 6, 2021, was embraced by Mr. Trump.

Mr. Epshteyn not only fielded and passed along to Mr. Giuliani the detailed proposal for Jan. 6 prepared by Mr. Eastman, he also handled questions about how to pay Mr. Eastman and made the arrangements for him to visit the White House on Jan. 4, 2021, the emails show.

That was the day of the Oval Office meeting in which Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman unsuccessfully pressured Mr. Pence to adopt the plan — an exchange witnessed by Mr. Pence’s two top aides, Marc Short and Greg Jacob, both of whom testified last week to the federal grand jury investigating the assault on the Capitol and what led to it.

The emails highlight how much of the legwork of finding ways to challenge Mr. Trump’s losses in the battleground states was done by Mike Roman, director of Election Day operations for Mr. Trump’s campaign.

Mr. Epshteyn and Mr. Roman, the emails show, coordinated with others who played roles in advising Mr. Trump. Among them were the lawyers Jenna Ellis and Bruce Marks; Gary Michael Brown, who served as the deputy director of Election Day operations for Mr. Trump’s campaign; and Christina Bobb, who at the time worked for One America News Network and now works with Mr. Trump’s PAC.

The emails were apparently not shared with lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office, who advised that the “fake electors” plan was not legally sound, or other lawyers on the campaign.

 

Some of the participants also expressed approval in the emails for keeping some of their activities out of the public eye.

 

For instance, after Mr. Trump hosted Pennsylvania state legislators at the White House in late November to discuss reversing the election outcome, Mr. Epshteyn celebrated when news of the meeting didn’t quickly leak. “The WH meeting hasn’t been made public, which is both shocking and great,” he wrote to Ms. Ellis.

On Dec. 8, 2020, Mr. Wilenchik wrote that Kelli Ward, one of the Republicans in Arizona participating in the fake electors plan, recommended trying “to keep it under wraps until Congress counts the vote Jan. 6th (so we can try to ‘surprise’ the Dems and media with it) — I tend to agree with her.”

Mr. Epshteyn, Mr. Wilenchik, Mr. Roman, Mr. Eastman, Ms. Bobb and James Troupis, another lawyer involved in the plan, either declined to comment or did not respond to emails or calls seeking comment.

Mr. Marks, in an email, disputed that there was anything inappropriate or improper at work.

“I do not believe there was anything ‘fake’ or illegal about the alternate slates of delegates, and particularly Pennsylvania,” he said. “There was a history of alternate slates from Hawaii in 1960. Nothing was secret about this — they were provided to the National Archives, as I understand the procedure, and then it was up to Congress to decide what to do.”

Mr. Marks added: “I had no involvement with Professor Eastman’s advice regarding the vice president’s role, which I only learned about after the fact, and do not support.”

 

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has produced evidence that Mr. Trump was aware of the electors plan. Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said in a deposition to the panel that Mr. Trump had called her and put Mr. Eastman on the phone “to talk about the importance of the R.N.C. helping the campaign gather these contingent electors.”

The panel has also heard testimony from Mr. Jacob, who was Mr. Pence’s counsel in the White House, that Mr. Eastman admitted in the Jan. 4 Oval Office meeting — with Mr. Trump present — that his plan to have Mr. Pence obstruct the electoral certification violated the Electoral Count Act.

The emails show less than lawyerly precision at times. Mr. Marks repeatedly referred to Cleta Mitchell, another lawyer helping Mr. Trump, as “Clita” and “Clavita,” prompting Mr. Epshteyn to reply: “It’s Cleta, not Clavita.”

Another time, Mr. Epshteyn wrote to Mr. Marks: “Do you mean Arizona when you say Nevada???”

By early December, Mr. Epshteyn was seemingly helping to coordinate the efforts, conferring repeatedly with Mr. Marks and others. Mr. Wilenchik told his fellow lawyers he had been discussing an idea proposed by still another lawyer working with the campaign, Kenneth Chesebro, an ally of Mr. Eastman’s, to submit slates of electors loyal to Mr. Trump.

“His idea is basically that all of us (GA, WI, AZ, PA, etc.) have our electors send in their votes (even though the votes aren’t legal under federal law — because they’re not signed by the Governor); so that members of Congress can fight about whether they should be counted on January 6th,” Mr. Wilenchik wrote in the email on Dec. 8, 2020, to Mr. Epshteyn and half a dozen other people.

“Kind of wild/creative — I’m happy to discuss,” Mr. Wilenchik continued. “My comment to him was that I guess there’s no harm in it, (legally at least) — i.e. we would just be sending in ‘fake’ electoral votes to Pence so that ‘someone’ in Congress can make an objection when they start counting votes, and start arguing that the ‘fake’ votes should be counted.”

 

As they organized the fake elector scheme, lawyers appointed a “point person” in seven states to help organize those electors who were willing to sign their names to false documents. In Pennsylvania, that point person was Douglas V. Mastriano, a proponent of Mr. Trump’s lies of a stolen election who is now the Republican nominee for governor.

But even Mr. Mastriano needed assurances to go along with a plan other Republicans were telling him was “illegal,” according to a Dec. 12 email sent by Ms. Bobb that also referred to Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City.

“Mastriano needs a call from the mayor. This needs to be done. Talk to him about legalities of what they are doing,” she wrote, adding: “Electors want to be reassured that the process is * legal * essential for greater strategy.”

The emails showed the group initially hoped to get Republican state legislatures or governors to join their plans and give them the imprimatur of legitimacy. But by December, it was clear no authorities would agree to go along, so the Trump lawyers set their sights on pressuring Mr. Pence, who was scheduled to preside over a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.

On Dec. 7, Mr. Troupis, who worked for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, wrote to Mr. Epshteyn that there was “no need for the legislators to act.” He cited Mr. Chesebro’s legal analysis that the key to Mr. Trump’s hopes was not blocking state certification of the electors on Dec. 14, but creating a reason for Mr. Pence to block or delay congressional certification of the Electoral College results on Jan. 6.

“The second slate just shows up at noon on Monday and votes and then transmits the results,” Mr. Troupis wrote of organizing Republican slates of electors to cast ballots for Mr. Trump on Dec. 14. “It is up to Pence on Jan 6 to open them. Our strategy, which we believe is replicable in all 6 contested states, is for the electors to meet and vote so that an interim decision by a Court to certify Trump the winner can be executed on by the Court ordering the Governor to issue whatever is required to name the electors. The key nationally would be for all six states to do it so the election remains in doubt until January.”

 

The documents also demonstrated the legal team had relied on widely debunked information to point to broad claims of election fraud. On Dec. 17, Mr. Epshteyn wrote to Mr. Giuliani that a document on election fraud created by Mr. Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro — which has been discredited in public reporting, by state officials and courts — “appears to be the most comprehensive summary of voter fraud from this election season.”

The lawyers were aware their legal efforts were being ridiculed. On Dec. 23, Mr. Marks wrote: “You folks are getting killed in the media on litigation strategy, even on Fox and among conservatives.”

But they were undeterred.

By Christmas Eve, Mr. Eastman seemed to want to harness the power of Mr. Trump’s millions of supporters.

At 8:04 p.m. that night, Mr. Eastman sent Mr. Epshteyn an email that he had received in which a woman implored him to ask Mr. Trump “to put out what he would like his 74 million followers to do to help.” She added: “We need to be one voice, with laser focus, SPEAKING AS 74 MILLION STRONG.”

In his email to Mr. Epshteyn, Mr. Eastman wrote, “Thought I’d forward this. 74 Million strong. Let’s figure out a targeted way to deploy them. Rolling thunder? One legislature at a time? The others can see it coming.”

Days earlier, Mr. Trump had told his supporters to descend on Washington on Jan. 6 for a “protest” that he promised would “be wild.”

On Dec. 27, Mr. Epshteyn wrote that Mr. Trump “liked” an aggressive approach being proposed by the lawyers, and that Mr. Eastman would be the “face of the media strategy” along with Mr. Giuliani.

“We need one voice out there,” Mr. Epshteyn wrote of Mr. Eastman, saying he’s “already been out/liked by POTUS.”

Jan. 6 was just days away.