New Jan. 6 security tapes reveal Trump alleged co-conspirator handing off fake elector docs to aides for key lawmaker: Report

Newly released security tapes from House Republicans appear to show key evidence underpinning elements of Donald Trump‘s alleged fake electors scheme in multiple states to overturn the results of the 2020 election, specifically an alleged handing of fake elector records from Michigan and Wisconsin to aides of a U.S. lawmaker by attorney Ken Chesebro and Trump’s 2020 campaign aide Gary Michael Brown.

Reported first by freelance journalist Jamie Dupree of Regular Order on Monday, the footage is from publicly released U.S. Capitol Police security cameras and is dated Jan. 5, 2021. It appears to show Chesebro and Brown multiple times carrying and then allegedly handing off the pro-Trump fake elector lists in a manila envelope and a Fed Ex envelope to aides for Rep. Mike Kelly, a Pennsylvania Republican. The footage would also seem to corroborate what Chesebro sent in a text message to Wisconsin attorney Jim Troupis on the morning of Jan. 6 when Chesebro said that Mike Roman, Trump’s 2020 director of Election Day operations, arranged to have him meet Kelly’s aides.

The security footage also shows two of Kelly’s aides dropping the records off at the Senate Parliamentarian’s office. Footage appears to show that the Senate Parliamentarian chatted with the aides for a moment and refused to take the packages. With their envelopes returned to the aides, the footage appears to show them wandering around before walking back to Kelly’s office.

Law&Crime could not clearly identify the aides in the video.

In 2022, Kelly denied knowing of any effort to advance fake elector lists from within his office after an explosive hearing by the Jan. 6 committee.

The committee revealed evidence during a public hearing in June 2022 that the office of Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, had made efforts to present pro-Trump elector slates to replace Wisconsin’s electoral votes for Joe Biden. But, as Pennsylvania NPR affiliate WESA reported in July 2022, Johnson said he was acting only as a conduit between Kelly’s office and staffers working for then-Vice President Mike Pence.

Kelly, who is now serving as the GOP chairman of the congressional task force to investigate the recent assassination attempt on Trump, denied any involvement with fake electors slates or lists after the Jan. 6 committee hearing. But when Johnson pushed back on that denial and claimed to have phone records showing Kelly’s longtime aide Matt Stroia was involved, Kelly opened an internal probe.

Johnson’s office told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Stroia had talked to Johnson’s then-chief of staff Sean Riley for two minutes “about how Kelly’s office could get us the electors because they had it.”

Kelly’s internal investigation into Stroia found no wrongdoing. Kelly’s office said Stroia never successfully passed fake elector lists to Johnson’s office but did not deny that he received an email about disseminating copies of fake elector lists for Wisconsin and Michigan, Politico reported in July 2022. Kelly’s then-chief of staff Tim Butler claimed Stroia “got the information” from someone on Trump’s team — allegedly Mike Roman — and that Stroia and one other staffer at Kelly’s office were involved in attempting to walk over the fake elector documents.

Those records were ultimately meant to be delivered to Pence, who was overseeing the certification of the 2020 election, but that delivery never happened.

The footage highlighted by Regular Order seems to underline the multifaceted role Chesebro allegedly played in 2020 and 2021 but further, that these are images the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol failed to pick up on.

For example, a footnote in the now-shuttered committee’s final report stated that it did not know where Gary Michael Brown delivered fake votes and that it had attempted to contact him repeatedly including through subpoena but he never replied. When the committee served Roman with a subpoena, he asserted his Fifth Amendment right.

The footnote continued: “What the Select Committee has determined, however, is that Brown likely delivered the fake electoral college votes to at least one of President Trump’s allies in Congress.”

Chesebro already pleaded guilty in October for his role in attempting to overturn election results in Georgia in 2020 and has reportedly been cooperating with prosecutors.

As Law&Crime reported in May, Chesebro was not criminally charged in Michigan when Attorney General Dana Nessel accused 16 Republicans of submitting inauthentic electoral slates and he may be cooperating there.

And while Wisconsin’s Attorney General Josh Kaul has neither confirmed nor denied whether its office is investigating the 10 fake electors in that state, as Law&Crime reported in June, Kaul did charge Chesebro, Roman and Troupis with felony forgery charges and as the AP noted in March, fake electors in Wisconsin settled a lawsuit that produced a trove of records allegedly detailing the fake electors plot.

Chesebro was revealed to be an unnamed and unindicted co-conspirator in special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 indictment of Trump in Washington, D.C., for criminally conspiring to subvert the 2020 election and intimidate voters, too.

As that indictment notes, “co-conspirator No. 5” assisted in “devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.”

An attorney for Chesebro and Roman did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday.

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