Numerous hints in the indictment provide information about other prominent individuals under investigation for interfering with the 2020 election, even though they are not specifically named.
A federal grand jury looking into the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, and other attempts to rig the 2020 election charged former President Donald Trump on Tuesday on four criminal counts.
The indictment names six co-conspirators in addition to the former president. These individuals include four lawyers, a Justice Department employee, and a political consultant who “helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification” of ballots.
There is no assurance that the co-conspirators will be indicted, but Special Counsel Jack Smith stated in a press conference on Tuesday night that “Our investigation of other individuals continues” – a statement that suggests further indictments may be forthcoming.
Numerous hints in the indictment, despite the fact that they are nameless, shed light on the suspects that prosecutors think were involved in the effort to challenge the outcome of the 2020 election.
Attorney Co-Conspirator No. 1
The charge against Co-Conspirator 1 refers to him as “an attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies that the Defendant’s 2020 re-election campaign attorneys would not.”
It is commonly accepted that this is Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City who served as Trump’s lawyer and spent months holding press conferences, appearing on television, and testifying in court.
“Co-conspirator 1 orchestrated an event at a hotel in Gettysburg attended by state legislators,” according to the indictment, which appears to be referring to a Giuliani-hosted event at a hotel ballroom in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in late November 2020.
In the Justice Department’s investigation before the indictment, Giuliani was questioned, but he has not been charged.
Separately, a Georgia special grand jury investigation into efforts to reverse the state’s 2020 election results for Trump has focused on Giuliani. In addition, he is defending himself against disbarment actions in New York and Washington, D.C., both of which are a direct result of his bogus election claims.
Attorney Co-Conspirator No. 2
Co-Conspirator 2 is identified in the indictment as “an attorney who devised and attempted to implement a strategy to leverage the Vice President’s ceremonial role overseeing certification proceedings to obstruct the certification of the presidential election.”
Later in the indictment, it is mentioned that the unnamed person falsely claimed that there had been voting fraud in a speech they gave on January 6. They claimed, “We no longer live in a self-governing republic if we can’t find the answer to this question. More important than President Trump is this. It must be done because it is fundamental to our republican form of government.
The speech by John Eastman, who has played a key role in the investigation into the tragic riots and attempts to rig the election, is specifically mentioned in those lines. He has identified himself as Trump’s attorney who was supporting the then-president in his efforts to demonstrate that the 2020 election was “stolen.” He was a former Chapman University professor.
On Jan. 6, Eastman attempted to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence to nullify the 2020 election results, according to a memo acquired by reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa (and mentioned throughout the indictment).
Instead, Pence issued a statement hours before Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s victory, assuring both the president and the public that he lacked the constitutional authority and had no intention of interfering with the election.
Co-Delinquent 3, a Lawyer
The statement that Co-Conspirator 3 was “an attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud the Defendant privately acknowledged to others sounded ‘crazy’” is a hint that is reminiscent of earlier reports that Sidney Powell, an attorney, was thought to be “crazy” by many people in Trump’s circle, including the former president himself.
However, the indictment claims that “[Trump] embraced and publicly amplified Co-Conspirator 3’s disinformation.”
Powell gained notoriety for her strange thoughts about how Trump lost to Biden in public. In press conferences and television interviews, Powell described an alleged decades-long conspiracy involving thousands of participants, the major political parties, and which claimed that the U.S. voting system was connected to the late Venezuelan autocrat Hugo Chavez and was secretly able to switch, create, and destroy enormous numbers of votes.
Before being fired by the Trump campaign soon after his electoral defeat, she also speculated about the potential roles of the Justice Department and the CIA.
A former Justice Department official is Co-Conspirator No. 4
According to the indictment, Co-Conspirator 4 was “an official of the Justice Department who worked on civil matters and who, with the Defendant, attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.”
Many people think that this is former Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark, who at the time served as the DOJ’s acting assistant attorney general for the civil division. According to a lengthy 2021 New York Times piece, he had “been devising ways to cast doubt on the election results.”
The House committee that previously looked into the rioting on January 6 claimed the plan included having Clark serve as acting attorney general.
The House committee stated in a letter that “in the weeks leading up to January 6th, then-President Trump’s appointees at the Justice Department informed the President numerous times that his claims of election fraud were not supported by the evidence, and that the election was not, in fact, stolen.” When Jeffrey Clark pushed his Department of Justice superiors to utilize agency powers to contest the election results, then-President Trump gave the idea some thought.
Attorney Co-Conspirator No. 5
According to the indictment, Co-Conspirator 5 was “an attorney who assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors in order to obstruct the certification proceeding.”
This can be a reference to Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney. In the wake of his electoral defeat, he has not drawn as much attention as other lawyers in Trump’s inner circle, but records indicate that he was a key figure in a scheme to have Trump supporters pose as voters in areas won by Biden.
In a memo dated Nov. 18, 2020, Chesebro argued that Wisconsin should select its own slate of electors (a duty that state law places in the hands of voters) and submit its votes for the Trump-Pence ticket by Jan. 6, rather than the historically significant deadline of Dec. 8 set forth in the Electoral Count Act. Chesebro first argued his position in favor of Wisconsin’s electors before later extending it to other states.
In the course of the Georgia grand jury’s inquiry into Trump’s attempts to invalidate the state’s 2020 election results, Chesebro’s testimony was among those whose testimony was subpoenaed.
Political Consultant Co-Conspirator 6
The key unidentified co-conspirator is Co-Conspirator 6, who the indictment describes as “a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.”
It’s too soon to say who might be the individual in question because Co-Conspirator 6’s description might potentially apply to several people in Trump’s circle. Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and the proprietor of a consulting firm, is the subject of rumors after it was discovered that she had pressed Republican lawmakers in Arizona to elect their own electors.
Thomas urged lawmakers in emails that were first made public by The Washington Post to “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure” and “ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen.” More than half of the Republican state legislators in Arizona received identical copies of the email that she sent to 20 members of the Arizona House and 7 senators.
Thomas urged Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, to annul the results of the 2020 election, according to emails and text messages obtained by the House committee looking into the riots. Eastman, who created the strategy to try to convince Pence to annul the results on January 6, was also in touch with Thomas.
However, some have asserted that Thomas is only receiving attention due to the scandal that would develop if it were discovered that she was Co-Conspirator 6. Other names that have been mentioned as potential candidates include the advisors Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, and Roger Stone, among others.
The final conspirator, like all the others before him, hasn’t been charged and is simply cited in the indictment against Trump to provide background information for his accusations.
