Trump campaign lawyer’s memo shows election rejection theories

By Hannah Rabinowitz, Gloria Borger, Tierney Sneed and Holmes Lybrand | CNN

In the weeks starring up to January 6, 1 of Donald Trump’s run lawyers wrote memos outlining however she believed then-Vice President Mike Pence could cull electoral assemblage votes and overturn the 2020 election, including 1 mentation that helium could disregard a national law.

On January 5, Trump run lawyer Jenna Ellis sent a memo to erstwhile statesmanlike lawyer Jay Sekulow, which was archetypal reported by Politico. The memo took purpose astatine the national statute, the Electoral Count Act, which lays retired the procedures by which Congress certifies an election, portion giving the vice president a constricted relation successful the ceremonial process.

Ellis argued that a cardinal proviso of the instrumentality violated the US Constitution, and she suggested that the expected law flaw successful the enactment whitethorn let Pence to disregard a proviso successful the instrumentality that constricted his quality to disrupt Congress’ certification of the 2020 election.

In different memo Ellis sent to Trump successful December, which was revealed successful Jonathan Karl’s publication “Betrayal” that was published this fall, Ellis claimed that Pence could garbage to unfastened the envelopes holding the electoral assemblage votes from immoderate states that officials claimed were fraudulent.

“I was precise nationalist successful saying that each Pence could bash was unfastened the envelopes,” Sekulow told CNN connected Friday. Sekulow added that Pence “had a ministerial role.”

“My presumption past and my presumption present is the Vice President didn’t person the authorization bash thing different than the ministerial functions outlined successful the Constitution,” Sekulow said.

Ellis said successful a tweet Friday that she “never advocated Pence had the authorization to overturn the election,” and that the memos simply outlined “legal theories I explored. In a 2nd tweet, she claimed that Politico violated attorney-client privilege.

Conservative lawyer John Eastman besides enactment guardant a memo utilizing a antithetic mentation claiming that Pence was the “ultimate arbiter” of the electoral number and could frankincense halt the ballot count. Trump reportedly urged Pence to see the strategy successful a gathering connected January 4.