EARLY PLANNING

House January 6 Committee Obtains Email Sketching Early Plan to Halt Election Certification

The email is the only document that the committee has obtained thus far only because a judge found that it could serve as evidence of a crime.

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection obtained an email from December 2020 that outlined an early potential strategy for how to stop Joe Biden from becoming president, at least temporarily. The email, written by lawyer Kenneth Chesebro and uncovered during a fight over right-wing lawyer John Eastman’s email account, sketches the possibility of putting election certification into the hands of the Senate president pro tempore, who was Chuck Grassley at the time. Chesebro said in the email that then-Vice President Mike Pence could recuse himself from the certification, leaving Grassley or another senior Republican in charge. Grassley could then, according to the plan, temporarily set Biden’s victory aside, leaving Trump more time to question the election results. The email is significant because it is the only document that the committee has obtained thus far because a judge found that it could serve as evidence of a crime.