Newly unearthed memos show Trump's campaign started plot to install fake electors just two weeks after election

The New York Times is reporting that a lawyer for former President Donald Trump's campaign drafted a memo that proposed installing fake "alternate" electors just two weeks after Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.

The memo in question was written by an attorney named Kenneth Chesebro and was sent to a Wisconsin Trump campaign lawyer named James Troupis, and the Times says it's the first known instance of Trump legal allies floating the idea of replacing the actual state electors with pro-Trump stand-ins.

"At the heart of the strategy was the idea that their real deadline was not Dec. 14, when official electors would be chosen to reflect the outcome in each state, but Jan. 6, when Congress would meet to certify the results," writes the Times. "And in that focus on Jan. 6 lay the seeds of what became a pressure campaign on Vice President Mike Pence to accept the validity of a challenge to the outcome and to block Congress from finalizing Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory."

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The Times also reports that the Chesebro memo was used by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman as they crafted a plan to get Mike Pence to refuse to certify the results of the 2020 election on January 6th.

"The memos were initially meant to address Mr. Trump’s challenge to the outcome in Wisconsin, but they ultimately became part of a broader conversation by members of Mr. Trump’s legal team as the president looked toward Jan. 6 and began to exert pressure on Mr. Pence to hold up certification of the Electoral College count," the paper notes.