Today we’re publishing the second installment in our series on the Ken Chesebro document trove. Today’s piece provides a detailed look at just where ideas like fake electors and the purportedly central role of then-Vice President Mike Pence came from. And far more than almost anyone seems to have realized they started with Ken Chesebro. Even ideas and strategies associated with the so-called “Eastman Memo” appear to have begun with him. In today’s piece Josh Kovensky provides never-before-reported details on how Chesebro found his way into the Trump orbit in the first days after Biden’s victory and how he became the key idea man behind what we might call Stop The Steal Thought.

This note from TPM Reader JS more or less summarizes my thoughts.

The Boat in the Atlantic. Great metaphor. I don’t know Jon Alter, but I get the feeling that many of the “he’s too old” crowd are just pre-loading “I told you so” ammunition if he loses. There’s no downside to saying what everyone else is saying. I think so many people can’t contemplate a Trump restoration that they have to have some explanation why it happened. Biden was too old. The kids hate Israel. Whatever. Those explanations make sense to these people in a way that “more voters liked Trump” does not. I think they are then living in that world where things will happen as they forecast and it’s more comfortable than just getting your shit together and holding the course on the boat we have.

Chris Christie, after a campaign that was, at least as I understood it, focused on blocking the danger of a second Trump presidency, says he probably would just not vote for President at all. He’ll leave that part of the ballot blank. “I can’t see myself voting for [Biden] because I don’t agree with his policies.” Marco Rubio meanwhile says he has “zero concerns” about Trump’s claim that he’ll encourage Russia to invade NATO allies if they don’t up their defense budgets.

My friend Jon Alter has a piece up about how Biden and his campaign can defuse and limit the damage from concerns about his age and mental acuity. Every point he makes is so on the mark I want you to go read it. The gist is the Biden’s age and occasional brain freezes are obviously a political liability. Jon has known and been interviewing Biden for 35+ years and he says he’s always been that way.

Sure Biden’s slower than he was even a decade ago. But the verbal missteps are same old same old for him. How you address that is leaning into it, getting Biden out in front of the public a lot. Yes, he will swap one name out for another or mangle words sometimes. It is what it is. Even though right wing media will seize on every goof viewers will also see a President who is basically fine, addressing complex issues in able and sophisticated ways. They’re already seizing on every awkward moment. If you keep Biden under wraps that’s all anyone will see.

I wanted to share a note I received from TPM Reader JR and my reply. Helps me refine my understanding of what we see in both Biden and Trump and how they are both perceived.

From TPM Reader JR …

I’m a practicing psychiatrist who has evaluated many people over the years for dementia.

Based on my experience, Josh M is on to something when he wrote about how Trump’s anger makes him seem less cognitively impaired than Biden.

I don’t know the precise timing and angle. But I fully agree this is worth going on offense. I hadn’t focused enough on the claim the President didn’t remember when his son died. Personal, gratuitous, callous, denigrating, almost certainly not true. From a longtime TPM Reader …

First off, Merrick Galrland is a disastrously bad AG.  He has appointed special counsels he never should have.  And he had no business allowing a report to be released that violated DOJ guidelines.  Most of all, his two years of fruitless propitiatory delay moving on the elite insurrectionists has America and the world on the doorstep of disaster.

Let me share a few thoughts on the Biden special counsel report.

First off, this is another example of the universal rule: Republican special counsels are chosen to investigate Democrats. And Republican special counsels are chosen to investigate Republicans. It may not have been a great idea for Merrick Garland to have a two-time Trump appointee investigate Joe Biden. But here we are. Robert Hur totally slimed Biden with these gratuitous comments about his mental acuity and memory, referring to him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Even if you assume they are the product of a good faith evaluation they are still wildly inappropriate.

DOJ guidelines make clear that if you’re not bringing charges you don’t bash the subject of the investigation in your announcement (a la James Comey). You certainly aren’t supposed to affirmatively attempt to demean the subject of the investigation with clearly political attacks that aren’t even related to what you’re investigating. Hur might as well have called him “Fake News Joe Biden.” It’s really that transparent and that bad.