STATEMENT

LDAD Files Ethics Complaint Against Kenneth John Chesebro

June 28, 2021

Oct 12, 2022

Photo: CJ Gunther/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Today, LDAD filed a disciplinary complaint in New York against Kenneth J. Chesebro for his conduct while acting as an attorney for President Donald J. Trump following the 2020 presidential election.

The complaint was signed by legal luminaries throughout the profession, including past presidents of the American Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, the NY City Bar Association, and County Bar Associations throughout the state. In addition, signers include leading law professors and other national experts in legal ethics and constitutional law.

The complaint alleges that Mr. Chesebro is the mastermind behind key aspects of the fake elector scheme to overturn the results of the election during the count of electoral votes in Congress on January 6, 2021. He was the first member of the Trump team to advance the theory that Vice President Pence had the sole authority to recognize and count the fake elector votes from multiple states.

He then acted in concert with other attorneys, notably John C. Eastman and Rudolph W. Giuliani, to implement this illegal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election in President Trump’s favor. The complaint states: “Although Mr. Chesebro did not succeed in his ultimate objective, the lies that he and his confreres perpetrated have undermined public faith in our elections and caused incalculable damage to our democratic values and institutions.”

Thanks in part to ethics complaints filed previously by LDAD, Mr. Eastman and Mr. Giuliani are already subject to ethics investigations and disciplinary proceedings for their roles in this endeavor. Today’s complaint asserts that Mr. Chesebro’s efforts to subvert our democracy by preventing the proper certification of Mr. Biden’s victory “plainly merit an investigation by the Grievance Committee.”

Links to the ethics complaint — which includes the list of signers (in formation) — and press release can be found below.