Thoughts About Co-Conspirator 5

I understand the motivations of five of those co-conspirators: Giuliani was originally appointed as associate attorney general, and then as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, by President Reagan. He’s a Republican through-and-through, despite having been a Democrat when he was young. Eastman is a long-time Republican (and a member of The Federalist Society); Powell was a federal prosecutor and then a conservative commentator for years; Clark worked in the George W. Bush administration; Epshteyn is, among other things, a Republican political consultant.

But what is Chesebro doing in that crowd?

Fifteen years ago, people would say that the Democratic party had three pillars of support: Unions, plaintiffs’-side trial lawyers, and northeastern intellectuals.  Those people contributed to the Democratic Party, respectively: Foot soldiers for get-out-the-vote drives, money, and ideas. There were also, of course, certain demographic groups that tended to vote Democratic (Black, Hispanic, Jewish), and there were certainly exceptions to the general rules, but those were the categories that people talked about.

Where does Chesebro fit into the Trump gang? Chesebro should be a Democrat.

Chesebro worked with Laurence Tribe on behalf of Al Gore in the 2000 election dispute. That’s no Republican. For many years, Chesebro has worked as a plaintiffs’-side appellate lawyer in important cases. He represented the plaintiff in Daubert (the junk science case) in the Supreme Court; he represented the plaintiff in TXO (the punitive damages case) in the Supreme Court; he represented state attorneys general on behalf of Vietnam vets who wanted to sue chemical companies; he was deputy special counsel in the Iran/Contra investigation, which looked at wrongdoing by officials in the Reagan administration.

When I look at this background, every fiber of my soul is screaming “Democrat.”

How did he come to represent Trump, and when did the wheels fall off so that now he’s an unindicted co-conspirator allegedly engaged in criminality meant to keep Trump in office?

There’s an interview that gives Chesebro’s explanation: It’s tough for plaintiffs to get high-quality lawyers to represent them on appeal, which is why Chesebro was drawn to a plaintiffs’-side appellate practice. It was tough for Trump to get high-quality lawyers to represent him, so Chesebro was drawn to represent Trump.

But I suspect it was more than that. I bet that Chesebro is a bit of a nihilist, interested in the advocacy game for the sake of the game, rather than the cause.  And I bet that Chesebro saw opportunities for advancement when he realized that he was generating legal theories that no one else who was working for Trump had yet devised. This was a real chance to shine in front of a person (Trump) who might one day be able to do Chesebro’s career some good.

This is all speculation, of course. I don’t know Chesebro, and I surely don’t know his motivations. All I can say is that, unlike the other unindicted co-conspirators in the January 6 case, Chesebro makes no sense.

Sometimes, one’s sense of smell is accurate: The odor tells you that something is there. I smell something funny about Chesebro. Perhaps Chesebro will make a deal with federal prosecutors before the other unindicted co-conspirators. Perhaps Chesebro’s defense will take a different route. Perhaps I’ll be otherwise surprised.

But keep your eye on Chesebro. I think that’s where the first surprise will appear.

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