Kansas Attorney General-elect Kris Kobach was among a group of eight attorneys in December 2020 who received an email from pro-Trump lawyer John Eastman that discussed potential intervention by the vice president on Jan. 6, 2021, according to the final report of the U.S. House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol that day.
The day after the Dec. 22 email, Eastman drafted a two-page memo outlining ways of ensuring Trump stayed in office, the report says, including that former Vice President Mike Pence could reject electoral college votes when Congress met to formally count the votes.
Pence, who echoed constitutional experts in saying he had no authority to intervene, refused to act to stop the count on Jan. 6, despite public and private pressure from Trump. When a violent pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, they searched for Pence, with some shouting to hang the vice president as a gallows was erected outside.
Kobach, a Republican who will take office in January, was an early Trump supporter and is well-known for supporting voting restrictions in the name of fighting voter fraud – co-chairing Trump’s presidential commission on the topic, which turned up no evidence of fraud.
In the wake of the 2020 election, Kobach also represented an election official in Wayne County, Mich., who wanted to rescind her certification of election results for President Joe Biden.
The House report shows that Kobach, who was a private citizen at the time, received messages from lawyers advising Trump during the crucial post-election period in which arguments that Pence could intervene during the certification were gaining steam among the president’s diehard allies.
“Kris Kobach responded to emails and stated that he thought the phrasing of the Constitution did not give the Vice President authority to determine which electoral voters to count. Kobach also stated that such a claim would likely lose in court,” Danedri Herbert, a spokesperson for Kobach, said in a statement.
The House committee voted Monday to refer Eastman, in addition to Trump, to the Department of Justice for prosecution. On Dec. 22, Kobach and the other attorneys also received an email from William Olson, an attorney who was floating extreme ideas to subvert the election, including firing the acting U.S. attorney general.
Less than a week later, Olson wrote a memo that acknowledged his ideas would be called “martial law” by the media if implemented, according to a copy published by The New York Times.