Six Co-Conspirators Described in Trump’s 2020 Election Indictment

The indictment of Donald Trump for his alleged crimes in seeking to reverse the 2020 election casts a spotlight on a circle of attorneys and advisers who helped spread claims of fraud and attempted to block the certification of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.

Six co-conspirators and their actions were described in the former president’s second federal indictment, submitted Tuesday afternoon by special counsel Jack Smith. The six weren’t named and none have been indicted. Smith said the investigation continues. 

Descriptions in the document indicate that they are former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump lawyers John Eastman, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark. A sixth person is described as a political consultant, whose identity is unclear. 

Clark and a lawyer for Chesebro didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment. A lawyer for Powell declined to comment.

Rudy Giuliani

The indictment described co-conspirator 1 as an attorney who “was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies” that Trump’s re-election lawyers refused to.

Once “America’s Mayor,” Giuliani was an early ally to Trump’s 2016 campaign and became the president’s personal lawyer in 2018 during special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Giuliani was the chief strategist of efforts to overturn the 2020 election in swing states, arguing a case on Trump’s behalf in Pennsylvania court. He also admitted to making false statements to the Georgia state senate, claiming election workers had used “suitcases” of unlawful ballots to commit fraud. Giuliani’s claims were resoundingly rejected in state and federal court, and he faces multiple defamation lawsuits.

In July, a D.C. bar panel recommended Giuliani be disbarred for making “utterly false” statements, and his law license remains suspended in New York. 

“Every fact Mayor Rudy Giuliani possesses about this case establishes the good faith basis President Donald Trump had for the actions he took during the two-month period charged in the indictment,” Giuliani adviser Ted Goodman wrote in a statement Tuesday.

John Eastman

The second co-conspirator is an attorney who the indictment said “devised and attempted to implement a strategy to leverage” Vice President Mike Pence’s ceremonial role to block Joe Biden’s

A former constitutional law professor who once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Eastman promoted the notion that Pence could single-handedly reject the electoral count on Jan. 6. He also asserted without evidence that Biden won in Georgia because 66,000 underage people and thousands of felons voted illegally there.

Eastman also unsuccessfully advanced the fringe “independent state legislature” theory to lobby state legislators in swing states to appoint alternate, pro-Trump slates of electors. The State Bar of California is seeking to revoke Eastman’s license.

Eastman’s lawyer, Charles Burnham, said the indictment was a misleading attempt to “contrive charges” against Trump and “cast ominous aspersions on his close advisers.”
“With respect to questions as to whether Dr. Eastman is involved in plea bargaining, the answer is no,” Burnham said. “But if he were invited to plea bargain with either state or federal prosecutors, he would decline. The fact is, if Dr. Eastman is indicted, he will go to trial. If convicted, he will appeal.”

Sidney Powell

The third co-conspirator is described in the indictment as an attorney whose “unfounded claims of election fraud” were privately acknowledged by Trump as “crazy.”

Powell joined Trump’s legal team soon after Election Day and quickly became the public face of efforts to cast doubts on the results. She regularly appeared on Fox News and other cable shows to promote her “unfounded” theories and talk about her lawsuits, including one filed against the governor of Georgia, according to the indictment. She was dismissed from the team by Giuliani weeks later but continued to be included in meetings with Trump and make television appearances. 

Trump considered naming Powell a special counsel to oversee election-reversing efforts and, despite his comments of doubt, continued to publicly promote her theories. 

Jeffrey Clark

The indictment describes the fourth co-conspirator as a Justice Department official who attempted to “open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.”

Clark, a midlevel Justice Department bureaucrat, proposed sending a letter to officials in swing states asking them to send slates of Trump-supporting electors, DOJ officials testified at a hearing held by the House Select Committee that was investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. A former environmental lawyer, Clark later promised to use the DOJ’s power to help Trump pressure state officials and open election investigations if Trump removed the then acting attorney general and nominated Clark to lead the Justice Department instead. The plan failed when DOJ officials threatened to resign en masse.

Kenneth Chesebro

The fifth co-conspirator is said to have “assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors,” according to the indictment.

Chesebro, an attorney and Trump campaign adviser, was the original architect of the fake elector plot. His memo to GOP party officials in his home state of Wisconsin on Nov. 18, 2020, is the earliest known proposal to nominate fake electors, which he then worked to replicate nationwide with Giuliani and others. Republicans from seven Biden-won states eventually met on Dec. 14, 2020, to cast fake electoral votes for Trump, which Trump allies then attempted to deliver to Capitol Hill. Chesebro has been the subject of a complaint to the New York Bar and a subpoena by a Georgia grand jury related to his efforts.

Political Consultant

The indictment describes the sixth co-conspirator, whom The Wall Street Journal hasn’t identified, as a political consultant alleged in the indictment to have “helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors.” The co-conspirator is said to have crafted lists of attorneys in swing states who could assist with the fraudulent effort, and also worked to confirm phone numbers for six U.S. senators who conspirators believed could help delay the certification of Biden’s election win.

Write to Isaac Yu at [email protected]