President Trump likely knew that the plan to disrupt the electoral count was wrongful, his mindset exceeds the threshold for acting 'corruptly' under § 1512(c)."[602]
Sufficient evidence exists of one or more potential violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c) for a criminal referral of President Trump based solely on his plan to get Vice President Pence to prevent certification of the election at the joint session of Congress. Those facts standing alone are sufficient. But such a charge under that statute can also be based on the plan to create and transmit to the executive and legislative branches fraudulent electoral slates, which were ultimately intended to facilitate an unlawful action by Vice President Pence, to refuse to count legitimate, certified electoral votes during Congress's official January 6th proceeding.[603] Additionally, evidence developed about the many other elements of President Trump's plans to overturn the election, including soliciting State legislatures, State officials, and others to alter official electoral outcomes, provides further evidence that President Trump was attempting through multiple means to corruptly obstruct, impede, or influence the counting of electoral votes on January 6th. This is also true of President Trump's personal directive to the Department of Justice to "just say that the election was was [sic] corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R[epublican] Congressmen."[604]
We also stress in particular the draft letter to the Georgia legislature authored by Jeffrey Clark and another Trump political appointee at the Department of Justice. The draft letter embraces many of the same theories that John Eastman and others were asserting in President Trump's effort to lobby State legislatures. White House Counsel Pat Cipollone described that letter as "a murder-suicide pact," and other White House and Justice Department officials offered similar descriptions.[605] As described herein, that draft letter was intended to help persuade a State legislature to change its certified slate of electoral college electors based on false allegations of fraud, so Vice President Pence could unilaterally and unlawfully decide to count a different slate on January 6th.[606] The letter was transparently false, improper, and illegal. President Trump had multiple communications with Clark in the days before January 6th, and there is no basis to doubt that President Trump offered Clark the position of Acting Attorney General knowing that Clark would send the letter and others like it.[607]
Of course, President Trump is also responsible for recruiting tens of thousands of his supporters to Washington for January 6th, and knowing they were angry and some were armed, instructing them to march to the Capitol and "fight like hell."[608] And then, while knowing a violent riot was underway, he refused for multiple hours to take the single step his advisors and supporters were begging him to take to halt the violence: to make a
