"Make them riot": Unsealed Trump Indictment Reveals Election Crimes of Mike Roman - advisor to Trump, the Kochs, Stephen Harper & the Canadian Conservatives
While Canada looks into election interference by Russia, China, and India, no one's talking about the Trump Advisor who was on the ground in Ottawa when the Convoy sought to topple Canada's government
The allegations are jaw-dropping. Smith has evidence from statements, texts, recordings and testimony that everyone knew it was a fraud and that it was clear that Trump had lost, but that they went ahead with it anyway.
He got his start in politics in the mid-’90s when he worked on behalf of a Republican state Senate candidate who claimed that he lost a special election due to widespread voter fraudamong Democrats. Sound familiar? In that case, the Republican candidate was actually able to convince a judge that he was right.
Roman oozed his way through the political muck and eventually made his way to the White House, serving as the special assistant to the president and director of special projects and research for Donald Trump. What does that mean exactly? Nobody was quite sure, including people who worked in the White House. For more on that, check out the 2018 Politico article “The Mysterious Oppo Researcher Working in the White House Lawyer’s Office.”
He reports to White House counsel Don McGahn, who represented the conservative Koch network as a lawyer during the period when Roman was working for the Kochs’ Freedom Partners group as head of research— a $269,000-a-year job that involved tracking the activities of Democratic political organizers and donors.
Roman, whose 25-person intelligence-gathering unit was officially disbanded by the Kochs in 2016, was hired by Donald Trump’s campaign to oversee poll-watching in the final weeks before the election and was among a handful of unannounced hires who quietly joined the White House soon after Trump’s inauguration.
Roman was Treasurer of the International Democracy Union, an international organization of right-wing political parties founded in the 1980s, before becoming Assistant Chairman, with former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper as current Chair.
During the Canadian Federal election of 2019, Mike Roman was working as an advisor to the Conservative Party of Canada.
The Globe and Mail reported that the Conservative Party and oil executives and expert strategists met to discuss how to beat the Liberals, and included discussion of using “friendly interest groups,” which in Canada is not actually supposed to happen.
Federal Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer delivered a keynote address, the document showed. His national campaign director, Hamish Marshall, and veteran Conservative organizer Mark Spiro spoke on a panel about “rallying the base” by using friendly interest groups that operate independently of the party.
“Michael Binnion, CEO of Questerre Energy Corp.; Patrick Ward, CEO of Painted Pony Energy Ltd.; Perpetual Energy Inc. CEO Susan Riddell Rose; and her husband, Mike Rose, head of Tourmaline Oil Corp. [who are] governors of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP)
Federal Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer delivered a keynote address. His national campaign director, Hamish Marshall, and veteran Conservative organizer Mark Spiro spoke on a panel about “rallying the base” by using friendly interest groups that operate independently of the party.
One session at the conference focused on deploying “litigation as a tool” to silence environmental critics and featured U.S. opposition researcher Mike Roman, who served as special assistant and director of special projects and research under Donald Trump until last year. He spoke alongside Arthur Hamilton, a lawyer with Quebec-based Resolute Forest Products, the agenda showed. Mr. Hamilton is also a lawyer for the federal Conservative Party.
Another panel was dubbed “Paths to federal election victory" and was led by an executive for polling firm Ipsos Public Affairs who was introduced by CAPP president Tim McMillan.
This is significant, in a number of ways, because Alberta and Saskatchewan have very loose campaign finance laws.
(There’s a profound irony about Canada - because there’s long been a taint of corruption attached to Quebec, being French and being Catholic, much of it due directly to political protestant bigotry. It has to be said there are actually stricter regulations and oversight at the Federal level, and often in Quebec. In those governments , corruption scandals result in public inquiries, criminal charges, jail time, and political change. By contrast, in provinces like Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, there are often few or no laws to break. Companies from Alberta can donate to political parties in Saskatchewan - and they did: $2-million to the Saskatchewan Party from 2006 to 2016. In Quebec, that kind of donation would be considered corruption. In Saskatchewan the Premier will go to the Calgary Petroleum Club to pick up the cheque in person.)
During the Canadian Federal Election of 2019, then-Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer was asked about Mike Roman working for the campaign.
Scheer’s flaccid deflection was that the campaign had attracted hundreds of volunteers. The “volunteer” reporters are asking about is the one whose full-time job is working in the White House for the President of the United States.
Whether Roman was being paid, or was volunteering, this seems to be an unprecedented level of interference in Canada’s elections.
A recent advisor to the U.S. President who works in the White House is putting in time to elect a particular party in Canada? How is this not considered the DefCon4 of foreign election interference?
How is this alone not considered a subversion of Canadian democracy?
As a Federal U.S. employee - and especially as an advisor to the President - it’s reasonable to conclude that Roman had to swear some version of this oath of office in order to get paid:
If we lived in less psychotic times, just having someone from another government playing a role on a campaign like this would be considered shocking. People would be resigning in disgrace, others resigning on principle. All that quaint stuff that actually used to happen with living memory.
However, what Mike Roman is accused of in the Trump case is criminal malice on a scale as colossal as what they were trying to steal: a U.S. election, and control of the most powerful country on earth.
The level of deceit and complete disregard for the truth, the law is still astonishing. The sheer brazenness of it as they tried bluff, threaten, and intimidate people who genuinely were committed to their oaths of office and the law ranges from horrific to hilarious.
They were lying, and they all knew it. The plan, before the election, was to lie, and say that Trump won the election.
The indictment includes such quotes as these:
"When our research and campaign legal team can't back up any of the claims made by our Elite Strike Force Legal Team, you can see why we're 0-32 on our cases. I'll obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it's tough to own any of this when it's all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership."
It is a tale of absolutely monstrous corruption, and Roman stands accused of playing a major part in it - reflected in the charges against him in multiple U.S. states.
I’ll start with a very brief summary, because there are a lot of things about the statements in these charges is that, while they have not been proven to be criminal is court, the evidence for the actions is well backed-up.
When the defendant [Trump] lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office. With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (the “targeted states”).
His efforts included lying to state officials in order to induce them to ignore true vote counts; manufacturing fraudulent electoral votes in the targeted states; attempting to enlist Vice President Michael R. Pence, in his role as President of the Senate, to obstruct Congress’s certification of the election by using the defendant’s fraudulent electoral votes; and when all else had failed, on January 6, 2021, directing an angry crowd of supporters to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification. The throughline of these efforts was deceit: the defendant’s and co-conspirators’ knowingly false claims of election fraud. They used these lies in furtherance of three conspiracies:
1) a conspiracy to interfere with the federal government function by which the nation collects and counts election results, which is set forth in the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act (ECA);
2) a conspiracy to obstruct the official proceeding in which Congress certifies the legitimate results of the presidential election; and
3) a conspiracy against the rights of millions of Americans to vote and have their votes counted.
What’s more, Smith makes it clear, they all knew they were lying - because they’re all on the record telling Trump that he lost.
The Defendant Knew that His Claims of Outcome-Determinative Fraud Were False
Following election day and throughout the charged conspiracies, the defendant, his co-conspirators, and their agents spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These lies included dozens of specific claims that there had been substantial fraud in certain states, such as that large numbers of dead, non-resident, non-citizen, or otherwise ineligible voters had cast ballots, or that voting machines had changed votes for the defendant to votes for Biden. And the defendant and co-conspirators continued to make these unsupported, objectively unreasonable, and ever-changing claims even after they had been publicly disproven or after advisors had directly informed the defendant that they were untrue.
The evidence demonstrates that the defendant knew his fraud claims were false because he continued to make those claims even after his close advisors-acting not in an official capacity but in a private or Campaign-related capacity-told him they were not true…
At its core, the defendant's scheme was a private criminal effort. In his capacity as a candidate, the defendant used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process, which through the Constitution, ECA, and state laws includes the states' notification to the federal government
of the selection of their representative electors based on the popular vote in the state; the meeting of those electors to cast their votes consistent with the popular vote; and Congress's counting of the electors' votes at a certification proceeding. As set forth in detail below, the defendant worked with private co-conspirators, including private attorneys [Ed.: Here, codes are used to redact names] CC1 [Rudy Guiliani], CC2 [John Eastman] , CC3 and CC5 and private political operatives CC6 and P1. The defendant also relied heavily on private agents, such as his Campaign employees and volunteers, like Campaign Manager P2 Deputy Campaign Manager P3 Senior Campaign Advisor P4 and Campaign operative P5
By cross-referencing the charges with people’s jobs, folks have been able to fill in the blanks. Of the first dozens people mentioned - Mike Roman comes in 11th, just ahead of Roger Stone.
In the indictment, Roman is accused of some truly shocking behaviour. I’ve replaced the P5 with Roman.
Michigan
“In the immediate post-election period, while the defendant claimed fraud without proof, his private operatives sought to create chaos, rather than seek clarity, at polling places where states were continuing to tabulate votes. For example, on November 4, [Mike Roman] a Campaign employee, agent, and co-conspirator of the defendant-tried to sow confusion when the ongoing vote count at the TCF Center in Detroit, Michigan, looked unfavorable for the defendant.
There, when a colleague at the ICF Center told [Roman] "We think [a batch of votes heavily in Biden's favor is] right,"? {Roman] responded, "find a reason it isnt," "give me options to file litigation," and "even if itbis [sic]."
When the colleague suggested that there was about to be unrest reminiscent of the Brooks Brothers Riot, l' a violent effort to stop the vote count in Florida after the 2000 presidential election, [Roman] responded, "Make them riot" and "Do it!!!"
The defendant's Campaign operatives and supporters used similar tactics at other tabulation centers, including in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the defendant sometimes used the resulting confrontations to falsely claim that his election observers were being denied proper access, thus serving as a predicate to the defendant's claim that fraud must have occurred in the observers' absence.
These were actions that were taking place across several states.
“Despite failing to establish any valid fraud claims, CC1 [Guiliani] followed up with P37 and P38 and attempted to pressure them to use the Michigan legislature to overturn the valid election results. On December 4, CC1 [Guiliani] sent a message to P38 claiming that Georgia was poised to do so (based on CCI [Guiliani’s] and CC2 [Eastman’s] false advocacy there in the December 3 hearing) and asked P38 for help: "Looks like Georgia may well hold some factual hearings and change the certification under ArtIl sec 1 cl 2 of the Constitution. As CC2 [Eastman] explained “they don't just have the right to do it but the obligation. ... Help me get this done in Michigan."
On December 7, CC1 [Guiliani] attempted to send P37 a message (though failed because he typed the wrong number into his phone):
"So I need you to pass a joint resolution from the Michigan legislature that states that, * the election is in dispute, * there's an ongoing investigation by the Legislature, and * the Electors sent by Governor Whitmer are not the official Electors of the State of Michigan and do not fall within the Safe Harbor deadline of Dec 8 under Michigan law."
Campaign operative P5 [Roman] was involved in the drafting of this message with the assistance of P41 who was associated with the defendant's Campaign efforts in Michigan.
The following day, CC1 [Guiliani] shared the draft with the defendant, sending it to his executive assistant, P42 by email.
As the indictment reads, “These efforts failed” because people committed to doing their duty and acting with an eye to preserving the integrity of the 2020 and future elections:
On December 14, the day that duly-appointed electors across the country met and cast their electoral votes, P37 [Mike Shirkey - MI Senate Majority Leader] and P38 [Lee Chatfield - MI House Speaker] issued public statements confirming that the defendant had lost Michigan and the legislators still had not received evidence of outcome-determinative fraud in their state. 172 P37 public statement included,
"[W]e have not received evidence of fraud on a scale that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan."
P38 stated, in part:
“We've diligently examined these reports of fraud to the best of our ability. .. I fought hard for President Trump. Nobody wanted him to win more than me. I think he's done an incredible job. But I love our republic, too. I can't fathom risking our norms, traditions and institutions to pass a resolution retroactively changing the electors for Trump, simply because some think there may have been enough widespread fraud to give him the win. That's unprecedented for good reason. And that's why there is not enough support in the House to cast a new slate of electors. I fear we'd lose our country forever. This truly would bring mutually assured destruction for every future election in regards to the Electoral College.
And I can't stand for that. I won't.”
Pennsylvania
In Pennsylvania, people were pushing back against the scheme, and rightly warning the electors that they could be charged with a crime.
“In Pennsylvania, the defendant's elector nominees' concern about the propriety of the plan presented a problem for the conspirators. In text messages that P5 [Roman] and СС6 [Christina Bobb] exchanged on December 11 into the early morning hours of December 12, P5 [Roman] told СС6 [Bobb] that P46 [Bernie Kerik] the state Republican Party Chairman whom the defendant had called shortly after the election? “is winding up the electors. Telling them if they] sign the petition they could be prosecuted. Need a counter argument or someone has to call him and tell him to stop." CC6 [Bobb] responded, "Have someone who knows him call him to tell him to stop." P5 [Roman] replied, "That's the plan. PA is squishy right now. Going to need a call with CC1 [Guiliani] tomorrow.”
The whole point was to secure votes on false premises. As Giuliani promised the reluctant Pennsylvanians that their votes would only count if Trump won his lawsuit, Roman and Jenna Ellis groused with each other by text, with Roman allegedly saying,“Whoever selected this slate should be shot."
On December 12, CC1 [Giuliani] CC5 [Kenneth Chesebro] CC6 [Christina Bobb] and others held a conference call organized by the Campaign to placate the defendant's Pennsylvania electors.
CC1 [Giuliani] falsely assured them that their certificates of vote would be used only if the defendant succeeded in litigation. During the call, some of the defendant's conspirators and agents exchanged text messages expressing frustration at the electors' concerns. P5 [Roman] wrote, "Whoever selected this slate should be shot."
P12 [Jenna Ellis] responded, "These people are making this so much more complicated than it needs to be omg" and "We couldn't have found 20 people better than this???"
P5 [Roman[ agreed, writing, "We need good substitutes." When the possibility arose that the electors' certificates of vote include conditional language making clear that they were not yet the duly-appointed electors,
P5 [Roman] wrote, "The other States are signing what CC5 [Chesebro] prepared - if it gets out we changed the language for PA it could snowball."
The indictment then details the preparations for the January 6 rally and riot, all of which were planned and engineered in advance, and which were designed to put pressure on Vice-President Mike Pence to withold certification of the vote, which he refused to do.
Emails obtained by CNN corroborate what Chesebro told Michigan prosecutors: He communicated with the top Trump campaign lawyer, Matt Morgan, and another campaign official, Mike Roman, to ferry the documents to Washington on January 5.
From there, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and a Pennsylvania congressman assisted in the effort to get the documents into Pence’s hands.
“This is a high-level decision to get the Michigan and Wisconsin votes there,” Chesebro told Michigan prosecutors. “And they had to enlist, you know, a US senator to try to expedite it, to get it to Pence in time.”
Ultimately, the point was to engineer a riot that would disrupt the certification of the vote, relying on people who believed the lies that had been deliberately spread for months. These lies were also spread by the media, particularly figures at Fox News, where evidence showed that figures like Tucker Carlson did not believe what he was telling people on the air about election fraud.
At 2:24 p.m., Trump was alone in his dining room when he issued a Tweet attacking Pence and fueling the ongoing riot: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
That afternoon, at the Capitol, a rioter used a bullhorn to read the defendant’s Tweet about the Vice President aloud to the crowd trying to gain entry to the building. The defendant issued the incendiary Tweet about Pence despite knowing—as he would later admit in an interview in 2023—that his supporters “listen to [him] like no one else.”
One minute later, at 2:25 p.m., the Secret Service was forced to evacuate Pence to a secure location. At the Capitol, throughout the afternoon, members of the crowd chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!”
“Where is Pence? Bring him out!”; and “Traitor Pence!”Several rioters in those chanting crowds wore hats and carried flags evidencing their allegiance to the defendant. In the years since January 6, the defendant has refused to take responsibility for putting Pence in danger, instead blaming Pence. On March 13, 2023, he said, “Had Mike Pence sent the votes back to the legislatures, they wouldn’t have had a problem with Jan. 6, so in many ways you can blame him for Jan. 6. Had he sent them back to Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, the states, I believe, number one, you would have had a different outcome. But I also believe you wouldn’t have had ‘Jan. 6’ as we call it.”
Ultimately, January 6 was a coup attempt. It was an attempt to illegally and violently reject the rightful and democratically elected President, using lies, deceit, intimidation and forgery.
This is not an ordinary crime - it is one of the highest crimes imaginable.
Mike Roman’s alleged role in all of it has been laid out in the indictment. The question is that, given what he has been accused of what role did he play in working in the White House, at the International Democracy Union, and as an advisor to Canada’s Conservative Party.
In many ways, it’s reasonable to describe Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” as Canada’s January 6. There is video footage of Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer meeting with convoy leaders in Saskatchewan as they head to Ottawa. Former Premier of Saskatchewan Brad Wall was giving advice to the convoy, before and after they arrived in Ottawa for the Occupation, which also blocked many border crossings in Canada.
This was accompanies by a tsunami of disinformation about vaccines and about Canadian law, which was being spread by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms as well as by a network of influencers.
As has been noted, the Convoy was calling for the government to be replaced, and for some of their members to be installed in government instead.
Like January 6, the entire point was to rope in “civilians” who have been radicalized to create the impression of a mass movement.
The Freedom Convoy was a paid protest, with millions of dollars in donations from outside of the country, aiming to topple the Canadian government.
While it did not topple the government, it did remove the leader of the Conservative Party, Erin O’Toole, and he was replaced with Pierre Poilievre.
For all the obsession with “foreign” interference in Canada, it’s mind-boggling that we are ignoring the involvement of a person charged with the crime of trying to steal a U.S. election - who was in Ottawa at the time of the Convoy.
On February 15, 2022, Mike Roman, tweeted this from his account.
It has to be asked - given the charges against Mike Roman, what exactly he was doing in Canada, what kind of work he did at the IDU, and what kind of advice and support he has been giving to Canada’s Conservative Party - or parties, plural.
It’s also worth asking - why are we only talking about interference from China, India and Russia, when it’s not clear that the outcome of a single election has been affected - while we are ignoring an unlawful protest funded by foreign donations that sought to topple the Canadian government, involving some of the same players as January 6? The silence, and selective outrage, is deafening.
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Another great article Dougald! This story should be at the top of every news outlet in Canada.