Arizona Officials Warned Fake Electors Plan Could ‘Appear Treasonous’

According to emails reviewed by The New York Times, two Arizona Republicans were recruited by former President Donald J. Trump’s allies to join an effort to keep him as president.

Kelli Ward, the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, and Kelly Townsend, a state senator, were both said to have expressed concerns to Mr. Trump’s lawyers in December 2020 about participating in a plan to sign on to a slate of electors claiming that Mr. Trump had won Arizona, even though Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won the state.

The scheme was part of a broader bid — one of the longest running and most complicated that Mr. Trump undertook as he sought to cling to power after losing the 2020 presidential election — to falsely manufacture a victory for him by creating fake slates of electors in battleground states who would claim that he had been the true winner.

Some of the lawyers involved in the effort doubted its legality. The emails, which were not previously reported, were the latest evidence that other key players knew they were on unstable legal ground and sought to justify their actions.

Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer working for Mr. Trump’s campaign, wrote in a Dec. 11, 2020, email to other members of the legal team that Ms. Ward and Ms. Townsend had raised concerns about casting votes as part of an alternate slate of electors because there was no pending legal challenge that could flip the results of Arizona’s election.

“Ward and Townsend are concerned it could appear treasonous for the AZ electors to vote on Monday if there is no pending court proceeding that might, eventually, lead to the electors being ratified as the legitimate ones,” Mr. Chesebro wrote to the group, which included Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer.

Mr. Chesebro wrote the word “treasonous” in bold.

The use of the word underscored how well aware at least some of Mr. Trump’s allies were that they were undertaking truly extraordinary steps to keep him in office, so much so that they risked being seen as betraying their country.

Ms. Ward, who pushed for the electors plan to be kept secret, ultimately joined the effort and signed a document that purported to be a “certificate of the votes of the 2020 electors from Arizona” and claimed that Mr. Trump had won the state’s 11 Electoral College votes.

One person working on the plan, the Arizona-based lawyer Jack Wilenchik, conceded in emails that the Electoral College votes the campaign was working to organize “aren’t legal under federal law” and repeatedly referred to them as “fake,” The Times has reported.

In a later email, Mr. Wilenchik said that the rush to file the papers with the Supreme Court was “to give legal ‘cover’ for the electors in AZ to ‘vote’” on Dec. 14, 2020, the day the Electoral College was slated to gather and cast votes.

Ms. Townsend ultimately did not sign the documents claiming that Mr. Trump had won the state’s election.

Both Ms. Ward and Ms. Townsend have since received subpoenas from the Justice Department asking questions about the fake electors plan and demanding documents detailing communications with Mr. Trump’s legal team.

Ms. Ward, Mr. Wilenchik, and Ms. Townsend did not immediately respond when we asked for comment.

The push to organize false electors’ slates involved Mr. Giuliani’s hands-on work. Emails indicate that he spoke with Ms. Ward, Ms. Townsend, and was apparently urging them to vote on December 14.

Mr. Chesebro sought assurances from Mr. Wilenchik that he would quickly file papers to the U.S. Supreme Court contesting a ruling by Arizona’s Supreme Court affirming Mr. Biden’s win in the state.

“Reason is that Kelli Ward & Kelly Townsend just spoke to the mayor about the campaign’s request that all electors vote Monday in all contested states,” Mr. Chesebro wrote to Mr. Wilenchik, apparently referring to a conversation with Mr. Giuliani.

He said that the concern from Ms. Ward and Ms. Townsend was that activating an alternate group of electors in favor of Mr. Trump “could appear treasonous” in the absence of a pending lawsuit. “Which is a valid point — in the Hawaii 1960 incident, when the Kennedy electors voted, there was a pending recount,” Mr. Chesebro added.

He was referring specifically to an example that he and others used as a basis for their argument that they could present fake slates electors. The result of the 1960 election in Hawaii was uncertain because the Electoral College was nearing its meeting. Richard M. Nixon claimed he had won the recount and was certified by the governor to form a slate. John F. Kennedy formed a slate of electors.

When the vote count was completed, Mr. Kennedy had won. His slate of electors was eventually certified.

The 2020 events were very different from the 1960 incident. By the time the Electoral College met on Dec. 14, 2020, the votes had all been counted, Mr. Biden had been declared the winner and various courts had tossed challenges filed by Mr. Trump’s allies.

In a follow-up email, Mr. Chesebro wrote that he no longer saw “cause for concern” because a legal action some of the group planned to file was “at the printer” and that the Supreme Court considers an action docketed whenever it is mailed. He said that it would be in the mail before the Electoral College met.

According to records, Mr. Wilenchik also filed the petition that day. (The Supreme Court denied the petition on February 20, 2021.

In the weeks that followed the election, Mr. Chesebro drafted a series of memos describing a plan to send “alternative electors” to Congress for certification. Two weeks after Election Day, Mr. Chesebro sent James Troupis, another Wisconsin lawyer, a memo describing a plan for naming pro-Trump voters in the state. Mr. Biden also won that memo.

Mr. Chesebro also sent a Dec. 13, 2020, email to Mr. Giuliani that encouraged Vice President Mike Pence to “firmly take the position that he, and he alone, is charged with the constitutional responsibility not just to open the votes, but to count them — including making judgments about what to do if there are conflicting votes.”

That idea became the basis for Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign against Mr. Pence in which the president attempted to convince his own vice president that he could block or delay the congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Chesebro was also involved in an email exchange with John C. Eastman (the pro-Trump lawyer) on Dec. 24, 2020. They were discussing whether to file legal documents. Their hope was that this would encourage four justices to accept a Wisconsin election case.

In those emails, Mr. Chesebro argued that the “odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way.”

Their exchange took place five days after Mr. Trump issued a call for his supporters to attend a protest at the Ellipse near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, the day Congress would certify the electoral vote count confirming Mr. Biden’s victory. “Be there. Will be wild!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.