New security footage from the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot have revealed possible new crimes in Donald Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election results.
Former Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro and a Trump campaign staffer, G. Michael Brown, were caught on camera handing fake elector documents from Washington and Michigan to aides of Republican Representative Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania on January 5.
The video corroborates what Chesebro admitted in a text message on January 6: that he dropped off fake elector documents to Kelly’s aides a day prior.
The documents ultimately didn’t get to Vice President Mike Pence, who was in charge of certifying the election results, thanks to the Senate parliamentarian refusing to accept the documents from Kelly’s aides. Bizarrely, after the documents were rejected, the aides wandered the halls on the second floor of the Capitol for a half hour, waiting for instructions.
It’s bad news for Kelly—and even more bad news for Chesebro, who is already in trouble in Michigan for his involvement in the fake elector scheme in that state. Chesebro was charged with felony fraud for his efforts to overturn Wisconsin’s presidential election results in June. He was named as a co-conspirator in Georgia’s fake elector charges, where he is cooperating with the state and has pleaded guilty to planning the scheme there. He is reportedly also cooperating with prosecutors in Michigan and Wisconsin.
This new set of evidence could lead to new charges, as it apparently wasn’t previously uncovered by the House January 6 committee, according to journalist Jamie Dupree. And while Kelly’s role was known, the extent of his involvement in the fake elector’s plot was not. Aside from that, however, the footage shows how close Trump’s cronies got to overturning two key states’s elections, as only the Senate parliamentarian and Vice President Mike Pence stood in their way.
