By this time, the Trump campaign had essentially cleaved in two. Top officials who had managed day-to-day activity for Trump up to the election, including in court, say they ceded responsibility to Rudy Giuliani and others, such as Chesebro, according to congressional testimony transcripts. Roman effectively switched teams to work under Giuliani’s structure, according to the testimony from Morgan and others.
A spokesperson for Giuliani did not reply to a request for comment.
‘It really went south on me’
Chesebro told Michigan investigators that his own emails show that Morgan remained deeply involved, including in the final hours before January 6, to ensure that the certificates reached DC.
“I don’t have a really warm feeling toward, at least, the top Trump lawyers that did this, hid from me what they were doing and then lied to Congress about me. So, it’s been really difficult,” Chesebro said.
Chesebro describes role of GOP lawmakers in electors scheme
Pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, an architect of the fake electors plan, tells Michigan prosecutors about how Congressional staffers helped get the fake elector ballots to the Capitol floor for the January 6, 2021, certification proceeding. (Chesebro says a staffer from Rep. Scott Perry’s office was involved, but the January 6 report says it was someone from Rep. Mike Kelly’s office.)
Chesebro further describes the fallout from his involvement the attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Source: Obtained by CNN
In his congressional testimony, Morgan said he knew of the elector plan but wanted to distance himself from the effort, delegating the work to others, including those under Giuliani.
Morgan told the January 6 committee last year that he initially believed the electors were only meant to be used as a contingency. The electors, he believed, should meet in their state capitals and cast their electoral votes but “not necessarily submit” the certificates to Congress unless “we prevailed” in court.
Morgan told the committee that the plan changed in December, saying it morphed from a “cast-and-hold” operation and had “shifted to cast-and-send.” And that’s when Morgan told the committee that he backed out, testifying that he directed an aide to “email Mr. Chesebro politely to say, ‘this is your task. You are responsible for the Electoral College issues moving forward.’”
“This was my way of taking that responsibility to zero,” Morgan told the committee, later adding that he “moved on” after that email was sent.
Morgan explained that he was concerned that the new plan to try to count the fake electors on January 6 “would make the Vice President’s life harder, and I didn’t want to be a part of that.”
“Mr. Morgan stands by his congressional testimony,” his defense attorneys told CNN in response to his emails and Chesebro’s statements to investigators.
Ultimately, on the eve of the joint session of Congress, Morgan helped get the ballots in place, according to the emails and according to Chesebro, who blamed his legal troubles squarely on the Trump campaign’s legal team.
“I could have avoided all this,” Chesebro vented to Michigan prosecutors. “It’s been a real lesson in not working with people that you don’t know and are not sure you can trust, because it really went south on me.”
CNN’s Avery Lotz, Annie Klingenberg, Fredreka Schouten contributed to this report.[/SIZE]