Trump Oval Office Photo-Op Attendees in Dec. 2020 Warned Not to Bring Up Overturning Election: Report
Trump Oval Office Photo-Op Attendees in Dec. 2020 Warned Not to Bring Up Overturning Election: Report
The photo-op happened in December of 2020, at the Oval Office
Published |Updated
Mariana Labbate
Former US President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media as he arrives at the New York State Supreme Court during the civil fraud trial against the Trump Organization, in New York City on December 7, 2023. Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images
Details from a photo-op with Donald Trump and a number of attorneys back in December of 2020 have resurfaced recently, CNN reports, and show that said attorneys had orders not to bring up overturning the election to the then-president.
In an interview last week with Michigan prosecutors about the fake electors plot to attempt to overturn the election, attorney Kenneth Chesebro recalled the meeting that happened on Dec. 16, 2020.
“There was a conscious effort to deflect him from a sense of any possibility that he could pull out the election,” Chesebro said in this recent interview. “Our marching orders were: ‘Don’t say anything that makes him feel more positive than the beginning of the meeting.’”
The attorney did not make clear who was giving them these orders before the photo-op happening in the Oval Office, according to said CNN reports.
“I ended up explaining that Arizona was still hypothetically possible — because the alternate electors had voted,” Chesebro continued.
This final remark left former RNC chairman Reince Priebus “extremely concerned” about “whatever optimism” Chesebro possibly created.
In response to these reports, a lawyer for Chesebro told CNN, “It was a photo-op and Trump talked to a lot of people. I don’t think the event lasted very long.”