Former Donald Trump impeachment lawyer and ethics czar Norm Eisen gave a list of the top co-defendants that he thinks will also be indicted along with the former president when it comes to Jan. 6 and the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election.
Speaking to former FBI deputy director Andy McCabe and legal analyst Allison Gill, Eisen brought up his model prosecution memo posted to Just Security last week.
Eisen explained that most are not very long, but Eisen drafted one that is about 250 pages to try and explain every possible option.
“I needed to provide a prosecution memo or pros memo that explains the reasons that the charges meet the charging standards the DOJ has,” said Eisen. Such prosecution memos are about “the ability to obtain a conviction at trial and then to sustain that conviction on appeal. You identify the defendants, you identify the charges; sometimes you’ll say a word about the defenses and why they won’t be successful. They’re not voluminous documents. I know we’ll talk about my inspiration for this 250-page memo. It’s the only 250-page memo in history. The actual ones are short.”
McCabe explained that such memos are sometimes mysterious, but in this case, Eisen is trying to “sift through everything” to give all possible options.
Among the people Eisen names as possible co-defendants are Trump, John Eastman and Ken Chesebro. Two ancillary people would be Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows. There is a concern that Giuliani might already be cooperating with the special counsel under a proffer agreement, which can be a kind of precursor to a cooperation agreement, former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) explained on MSNBC.
Taking to Twitter after the podcast dropped, Eisen explained that among those top three, he absolutely sees Eastman among those that will be indicted in conjunction with the federal charges.
Gill said that she was struck by the three parts that Eisen broke it down into: The conspiracy to defraud the U.S. with the fraudulent electors, conspiracy to obstruct the official proceeding by pressuring Mike Pence and inciting the insurrection. She noted that there were so many other facets, including fundraising, rally donations, threats to officials, help from members of Congress and others items. But at its heart, Eisen explained that these are the three pieces that it will lead back to.
A big piece of this, he continued, is that the House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack and the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election crafted a final report that he said would go down in history.
So, in crafting his own mock indictment, he followed a kind of legal Occam’s Razor, with the most straightforward path being the sensible one that can be won.
“Trump tried everything in the world, and it all failed,” Eisen continued. “But when that ended — from running for election to the failure of the [Brad] Raffensperger call in early January — when that ended, he was left holding these counterfeit certificates and 48-hour pressure campaign on Pence to use those phony certificates, it’s like counterfeit money.”
With those three acts, the fake certificates, pressuring Pence, and the insurrection, there are three statutes that can easily lead to the full indictment for the 2020 election crimes.
Listen to his full explainer in the “Jack” podcast by McCabe and Gill here.
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