Political warfare comes home to the US - the founder of the Nixon presidential library comments on the history of US disputes over presidential succession and the Trump indictments

Based on this morning's Guardian piece about Kenneth Chesebro, I went chasing after more detail on how his legal theories were intended to buttress the conspiracy.

Chesebro's deposition in the Congressional Jan. 6 hearings was an artful work of dodging and weaving via 5th Amendment claims and attorney-client privileges. Nonetheless, it reveals that Chesebro was well aware the plot was potentially "treasonous" (he uses that word three times). On pages 87 - 90 of the transcript, it's revealed that Chesebro was intentionally promoting the myriad state and federal legal actions claiming election fraud to create the public political impression that there was real fire under the legal smoke cloud.

Q: So let's pull up exhibit 29. This, Mr. Chesebro, is a fairly long December 24, 2020, communication involving yourself, Dr. Eastman, Judge Troupis, a number of other individuals affiliated with the Trump campaign, like Justin Clark, Matt Morgan and others. And I'll represent to you that the general topic of discussion on this email chain is about appealing a Pennsylvania State Court decision to the Supreme Court. I'm going to take you down somewhat in this chain to a December 24th email that you wrote at 7:41 a.m. In our document, it's sort of at the bottom of page 3, moving into page 4. So if you scroll down a little bit further, there's a sort of bolded header that reads "possible political value." And there you write, quote: "The relevant analysis, I would argue, especially if the resource constraint is removed is political." And you write: "Just getting this on file means that on Jan 6, the Court will either have ruled on the merits or, vastly more likely, will have appeared to dodge again (declining to rule; the point is that the Court can and should rule after Jan 20. If it doesn't expedite, hopefully will prevent a loss before Jan 6.) You write that: "This will feed the impression that the courts lack the courage to fairly and timely consider these complaints, and justifying a political argument on January 6 that none of the electoral votes from the States with regard to which the judicial process has failed should be counted." What did you mean when you wrote that?

A: Again, I don't think I can get into it, consistent with my invoking the Fifth Amendment privilege. And it's also the same core attorney-client privileged material, as far as on its face it's outlining options for the campaign's effort to take every opportunity to try to prevail in the contest. So I just don't think it's something I can address.

Q: Slightly above this, you evaluate the odds of legal relief here, and you say, quote: "As far as the odds that the Court would grant effective relief before January 6th, I'd say only 1 percent." And above that, you write that the likelihood of a court ever finding in your favor, at any point in time, is no more than 5 percent. I guess my question is, why did you have confidence in the January 6th strategy that you had outlined if you thought that there was such a low likelihood that a court would ever grant effective relief on these legal arguments?

A: That clearly goes to matters of legal strategy that are protected by the attorney-client privilege and Rule 1.6. And also, I'm invoking the Fifth Amendment on that.

Q: Let's scroll down a little bit. You write at the --in the bottom paragraph here, quote: "I think having, as many States still under review (both judicially and in State legislatures) as possible is ideal, even if the only political payoff ends up being simply either a bolstering of the argument that there should at least be extended debate in Congress about the election regularities in each State or, alternately, the public should come away from this believing that the election in Wisconsin was likely rigged and stolen by Biden and Harris, who were not legitimately elected."

Edited to remove residual numbering from the deposition transcript.