Inside Trump’s six-person team of alleged co-conspirators and their effort to overturn Election 2020
The indictment lays out a remarkably concise case that seamlessly integrates the multiple stages of the operation. The co-conspirators allegedly promoted baseless claims about election fraud, assembled fake electors slates, attempted to corrupt the Justice Department and pressured Vice President Mike Pence to obstruct Congress’ electoral vote certification. Finally — using the same falsehoods — they allegedly helped launch violent Trump supporters toward the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 for an afternoon of democracy-shaking mayhem.
It remains unclear whether any or all of these alleged co-conspirators will ultimately face charges in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation or a parallel investigation led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, which is expected to yield indictments any day.
And while the U.S. House January 6 select committee identified a sprawling cohort of Trump-backing political operatives, lawyers, grifters, conspiracy theorists, influencers and militants responsible for mobilizing an insurrection, the latest federal indictment makes the case that a half-dozen of them did uniquely dirty deeds.
Trump mob at the Capitol. Shutterstock
Based on Raw Story’s extensive reporting on the January 6 insurrection and its aftermath, here’s what can be deduce about the unnamed co-conspirators, who could themselves face indictments, with the potential to limit their liability by cooperating with prosecutors:
“Co-Conspirator 1,” described in the indictment as “an attorney who was willing to spread false claims and pursue strategies that the Defendant’s 2020 reelection campaign attorneys would not,” is former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who took control of legal challenges from the Trump campaign’s senior-level lawyers after the election.
“Co-Conspirator 2,” described as holding responsibility for a “strategy to leverage the Vice President’s ceremonial role overseeing the certification of the presidential election,” is former Chapman University law professor John Eastman. As recounted in the final report by the January 6 House select committee, Eastman argued to Vice President Mike Pence on Trump’s behalf that he could unilaterally reject certified electors in states won by Joe Biden.
“Co-Conspirator 3,” an attorney allegedly described by Trump as sounding “crazy,” is likely Sidney Powell, who was officially dismissed by the Trump campaign but continued to work in tandem with Giuliani while promising to unleash the “kraken” through lawsuits filed in several states that were based on wildly conspiratorial claims.
“Co-Conspirator 4,” described as “a Justice Department official who worked on civil matters,” is Jeffrey Clark. He reportedly tried to get the department to send a letter to state officials that falsely claimed that the agency was investigating election “irregularities” while requesting that at least one state call a special session to consider replacing the certified Biden electors
“Co-Conspirator 5,” described as “an attorney who assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding,” is an outside lawyer named Kenneth Chesebro. The final report of the January 6 select committee concluded that although Eastman held a more prominent role in advising Trump in the days immediately before Jan. 6, Chesebro “was central to the creation of the plan.”
“Co-Conspirator 6,” described as “a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors,” is almost certainly Mike Roman, a former Koch network opposition researcher who served as director of election day operations, and was placed in charge of executing the fake electors scheme.
The New York Times has pointed to Boris Epshteyn, a former strategic adviser to the 2020 Trump campaign who is now serving as an adviser to the current Trump campaign, as a likely candidate for co-conspirator 6. Reached by Raw Story, Epshteyn declined to clarify whether he is co-conspirator 6, referring questions to Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung, who did not respond to an email for this story.As for what these individuals did in service to Trump during the weeks after Election Day 2020, these are their stories.
Giuliani at center of pressure campaign
The indictment — which also charges Trump with conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights — places Giuliani, as “Co-Conspirator 1,” squarely in the middle of a strategy launched soon after Election Day “to use knowing deceit in the targeted states to impair, obstruct, and defeat the federal government function.”
Robert Costello, Giuliani’s lawyer, has reportedly acknowledged “Co-Conspirator 1” appears to refer to his client. Giuliani responded to the indictment on X, the social media app formerly known as Twitter, by saying that it “eviscerates the First Amendment and criminalizes the ruling regime’s number one political opponent for daring to ask questions about the 2020 election results.”
The charging document details several episodes in a pressure campaign against state officials that Giuliani is already known to have quarterbacked.
Trump and Giuliani, as “Co-Conspirator 1,” are specifically accused of asking the “Arizona House Speaker to use the legislature to circumvent the process by which legitimate electors would be ascertained for Biden based on the popular vote, and replace those electors with a new slate for the defendant.”
Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump. Photo via AFP.
Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers publicly testified before the January 6 select committee in July 2022 that he accepted a phone call from the White House, and Giuliani spoke first before turning the call over to Trump.
“Well, we have heard by an official high up in the Republican legislature that there is a legal theory or a legal ability in Arizona that you can remove the electors of President Biden, and replace them,” Trump said, according to Bowers. “And we would like to have the legitimate opportunity through the committee to come to that end and remove that.”
The indictment also focuses on Giuliani’s role in setting up a presentation to the Georgia Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Dec. 3, 2020, and promoting a false claim that two Fulton County election workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shae” Moss, manipulated votes at the State Farm Arena counting center.
Last month, Giuliani stipulated in court documents that he “does not contest” that his statements were “false,” in an effort to resolve a defamation lawsuit brought by the two women. He later denied that he lied.
As detailed in the federal indictment, the election worker vote manipulation claim was debunked the day after the presentation in a press conference held by the Georgia Secretary of State’s office. But Giuliani and Trump continued to air it, repeatedly.
According to the indictment, Giuliani appeared at a second state legislative hearing in Georgia on Dec. 10, and — singling out the two Black women by name — claimed they were “quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they were vials of heroin or cocaine.” The language in Giuliani’s claim, beyond being false, invokes a racial stereotype.
Trump similarly invoked racial stereotypes when he mentioned Freeman’s name almost 20 times during a Jan. 2 phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, referring to Freeman as “a professional vote scammer and hustler.”
Without naming Giuliani, the indictment cites Raffensperger’s response: “You’re talking about the State Farm video. And I think it’s extremely unfortunate that Giuliani or his people, they sliced and diced that video and took it all out of context.”
The indictment accuses Trump of lying to Raffensperger through a myriad of false claims, including the attack on Freeman, “to induce him to alter Georgia’s popular vote count.” Homing in on Trump’s effort to pressure Raffensperger, the indictment describes how Trump said “he needed to ‘find’ 11,780 votes, and insinuated that the Georgia Secretary of State and his Counsel could be subject criminal prosecution if they failed to find election fraud as he demanded.”
The indictment also alleges that Giuliani sent a text to Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Skirkey, stating, “So, I need you to pass a join resolution from the Michigan legislature that states that
* the election is in dispute
* there’s an ongoing investigation by the Legislature, and
* the Electors sent by Governor [Gretchen] Whitmer are not the official electors of the State of Michigan and do not fall within the Safe Harbor deadline of Dec 8 under Michigan law.”
‘A corrupt plan to subvert the federal government’
As described in the indictment, the purpose of the fake electors scheme in seven states where Biden carried the popular vote was to “create a fake controversy at the certification proceeding and position the Vice President — presiding on January 6 as President of the Senate — to supplant legitimate electors with the Defendant’s fake electors and certify the Defendant as president.”
Trump allies also made a bid to assemble Republican electors in New Mexico, where Biden prevailed by a 10-percent margin, although they appear to have abandoned the effort.
The indictment alleges that the plan “capitalized on ideas presented in memoranda drafted by Co-Conspirator 5.” The January 6 select committee identified the author of the two memoranda, dated Nov. 18 and Dec. 9, as Kenneth Chesebro, a Boston-based attorney who volunteered for the Trump campaign.
The indictment charges that “the memoranda evolved over time from a legal strategy to preserve the Defendant’s rights to a corrupt plan to subvert the federal government function by stopping Biden electors’ votes from being counted and certified.”
Chesebro could not be reached for this story prior to publication.
When Chesebro was deposed by the January 6 select committee, he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. His lawyer told investigators that he was “faced with a tremendous amount of jeopardy” while citing the separate investigations by the special counsel and the Fulton County district attorney.
The indictment describes a Dec. 12, 2020 conference call that allegedly took place to address concerns by Republican electors in Pennsylvania about the propriety of the fake electors scheme. The indictment names “Co-Conspirator 1,” who is Giuliani, “Co-Conspirator 5,” who is Chesebro, and “Co-Conspirator 6,” who is likely Roman, as participating in the call.
The identities of the participants are confirmed through an email obtained by the January 6 select committee. In the email, which is likewise dated Dec. 12, Chesebro wrote, “Mike Roman and I were on a conference call with Mayor Giuliani today, and the mayor indicated he’d like to wait until all the electors have voted before putting out any statements or otherwise alerting anyone to focus on making sure the vote gets done and minimize the chances of electors being harassed.”
According to the indictment, when the Trump electors in Pennsylvania “expressed concern about signing certificates representing themselves as legitimate electors,” Giuliani “falsely assured them that their certificates would be used only if the Defendant succeeded in litigation.”
In his Dec. 12, email, according to the January 6 select committee, Chesebro wrote: “Here is my suggested language dealing with the concern raised in the PA conference call about electors possibly facing legal exposure at the hands of a partisan AG if they seem to certify that they are the valid electors.”
As previously reported by Raw Story, Trump campaign associate counsel Joshua Findlay described Roman in an email to the campaign’s state-level contacts as “the lead for executing the voting” during the Dec. 14 meeting of the fake electors.
Chesebro would be “the point person for the legal documents.”
All would report to Giuliani.
In a Dec. 12, 2020 email obtained by the January 6 select committee with the heading, “Elector Whip Operation,” Roman wrote to his state-level subordinates that needed “a tracker for the electors,” while listing Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
He asked members of the team to populate the tabs with the names of the electors, their phone numbers and addresses, with a check-off if they were contacted and a “yes” or “no” response indicating whether they planned to attend. Roman’s email also alerted the team members that they would be expected to join a conference call at 9 p.m. that day.
Christina Bobb, an attorney on the Giuliani legal team, summarized the conference call in an email that she sent to Roman at 9:30 p.m. and that he then forwarded to the team.
Bobb’s notes included a breakdown of logistical considerations for each state. Bobb’s report for Pennsylvania flagged some challenges: “4 definite yeses out of 20. 7 backups. Not sure the updated language will be acceptable. It seems fine, but there are concerns. Waiting to hear from [state Sen. Doug] Mastriano’s office about getting a room. Mayor may need to make a call. Still replacing electors.”
Roman has accepted a proffer agreement from the special counsel team to speak informally with prosecutors that allows him to avoid testifying before a grand jury, according to a report by CNN.
Typically, under such conditions, according to the report, prosecutors agree to not use witnesses’ statements against them in future criminal proceedings.
Roman could not be reached for this story.
Similar to the concerns raised by the Trump electors in Pennsylvania, the indictment cites misgivings by Trump allies in Arizona to make the case that Trump and his co-conspirators knew that the fake electors scheme was illegal.
The indictment indicates that Chesebro placed a phone call on Dec. 8, 2020, to an Arizona attorney, who appears to be Jack Wilenchik, who helped organize the Trump electors in that state.
The indictment quotes an email from Wilenchik at length recounting the conversation. Wilenchik wrote that Chesebro’s “idea” was for the Trump electors in Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona and Pennsylvania to “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.”
Wilenchik described Chesebro’s plan as “kind of wild/creative,” adding that “we would just be sending ‘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.”
Wilenchik’s email was cited by investigators on the January 6 select committee during Chesebro’s deposition. Asked to explain his conversation with Wilenchik by the House investigators, Chesebro pleaded the Fifth.
‘Remember this day forever!’
Although the indictment does not include any charges for insurrection or incitement, specifically, the charging document directly links the false claims made by Trump and his co-conspirators — and their pressure campaign against Vice President Mike Pence — to the violence that took place on Jan. 6, 2021.
As a final step in what the indictment describes as a “conspiracy to impair, obstruct, and defeat the federal government function through dishonesty, fraud, and deceit,” the indictment charges that “after it became public on the afternoon of January 6 that the Vice President would not fraudulently alter the election results, a large and angry crowd — including many individuals whom the Defendant had deceived into believing the Vice President could and might change the election results — violently attacked the Capitol and halted the proceeding.”
The indictment also makes the case that Trump “repeated knowingly false claims” about supposed election fraud in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin during his speech at the Ellipse, just south of the White House, on Jan. 6.
Alongside Trump, the indictment makes the case that Giuliani and Eastman personally fueled the violence on Jan. 6 with their rhetoric during the rally at the Ellipse by intensifying “pressure on the Vice President to fraudulently obstruct the certification proceeding.”
Rudy Giuliani. Screengrab.
Speaking before Trump, Giuliani “told the crowd that the Vice President could ‘cast [the Electoral Count Act] aside’ and unilaterally ‘decide the validity of these crooked ballots,’” the indictment recounts. “He also lied when he claimed to ‘have letters from five legislatures begging us’ to send elector slates to the legislatures for review, and called for ‘trial by combat.’”
As for Eastman, the indictment recounts that he told the crowd at the Ellipse: “[A]ll we are demanding of Vice President Pence is this afternoon at one o’clock he let the legislatures of the state look into this so we get to the bottom of it and the American people know whether we have control of the direction of our government or not. We no longer live in a self-governing republic if we can’t get the answer to this question.”
Harvey A. Silverglate, Eastman’s lawyer, told Raw Story that “Co-Conspirator 2” is “probably, almost certainly” his client, adding that the Department of Justice did not notify them that Eastman would be part of the indictment.
Silverglate said Eastman’s legal team is drafting a memorandum to the Department of Justice “arguing why it is that Eastman, on the basis of the facts and applicable law, did not commit a crime and urging them not to indict.”
If the special counsel opts to indict, Silverglate added, “Eastman is going to trial. There will be no plea deal.”
The indictment argues that Trump repeated false claims of election fraud, encouraged suspense around the notion that Pence might alter the election outcome, and directed his supporters to the Capitol.
Among the particulars in the barrage of falsehoods, the indictment cites a tweet from Trump at 6:01 p.m. on Jan. 6 after thousands of his supporters had swarmed the Capitol and, armed with chemical spray, batons, Tasers and other weapons, fought pitched battles with police officers.
“These are things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long,” Trump tweeted. “Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”
This story was updated with additional reporting on Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2023 at 6:05 p.m. EST.
Former President Donald Trump. Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons