'Don’t get Trump’s hopes up': New recording shows lawyers got 'marching orders' in 2020

Donald Trump's attorneys were given "marching orders" in December 2020 not to get the then-president's hopes up about overturning his election loss, according to new evidence turned up in an election subversion case.

CNN obtained audio recordings of attorney Kenneth Chesebro telling Michigan state prosecutors last week that he and other Trump lawyers were given that clear instruction before going into the Oval Office for a photo opportunity with the ex-president two days after the Wisconsin Supreme Court had rejected his lawsuit to nullify the state's election results.

“There was a conscious effort to deflect him from a sense of any possibility that he could pull out the election,” Chesebro told prosecutors. "Our marching orders were: Don’t say anything that makes him feel more positive than the beginning of the meeting.’”

It's not clear who gave those orders to the attorneys, who were in Washington, D.C., for a Senate hearing about election issues, but Chesebro told Trump he could still win in Arizona and discussed details of his fake electors scheme — which has resulted in criminal charges against the former president, many of his allies and state Republican officials who took part.

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“I ended up explaining that Arizona was still hypothetically possible — because the alternate electors had voted,” Chesebro told investigators in Michigan, where 15 Republicans have been charged with forgery and other crimes.

"[This made it] clear [to Trump] in a way that maybe it hadn’t been before, that we had until Jan. 6 to win, and that, you know, created a real problem."

A source told CNN that former Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus was visibly angry when he saw Chesebro whispering the plot to Trump, and Chesebro told investigators that Priebus, "Was going to do damage control … to mitigate whatever optimism I guess I created.”

Chesebro got a stern email two days later from Jim Troupis, who had led the Wisconsin challenge but bluntly told Trump at the photo opp that he had no path to victory in his state — although the former president infamously told the crowd during his Jan. 6, 2021, "Stop the Steal" rally that "we won Wisconsin," citing several fraud claims that were rejected in Troupis' lawsuit.

"Reince was very explicit in his admonition that nothing about our meeting with the President can be shared with anyone," Troupis said in the email. "The political cross-currents are deep and fast and neither you or I have any ability to swim through them.”