Republicans in at least seven swing states, all won by Joe Biden — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — created false documents claiming each state's electors were casting their electoral votes for Donald Trump and Mike Pence.
Each state's party then filed those forged documents with the U.S. government, hoping the fake documents signed by the fake electors designating fake electoral votes for the actual loser of each state's election would be accepted on January 6, 2021 as the real certifications of real elector votes from real electors.
The documents are all extremely similar, so it is very difficult to believe this was not a highly-coordinated (and extremely illegal) effort, likely headed by Trump's Department of Justice.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow has been reporting this story for a couple of days.
Alex Henderson of AlterNet reports:
Maddow went on to discuss a December 28, 2020 draft letter written by Jeffrey Clark, a Trump loyalist who served in the U.S. Department of Justice during Trump's final weeks in office. Clark's letter, Maddow noted, "explicitly describes these forged slates of electors from multiple states."
"We now know: multiple states — Republicans in multiple states — had sent in false assertions, forged documents claiming to be the electors for their states," Maddow noted. "That draft letter was dated December 28. How did that guy, that Trump guy at the Justice Department, know that two weeks earlier, Republicans in at least five states had, in fact, created these forged elector documents? Did the Trump Justice Department know about it because they helped Republicans in those states do it? We don't know. But somebody helped them do it, because they all filed the exact same document in the same font, in the same spacing, with the exact same language. So, somebody helped them do it."
"In exactly how many states did this happen? We previously knew of one; now we know of three.
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) January 11, 2022
Trump lost 25 states in 2020. How many of them included election opponents willing to send forged election-related documents to government offices?"https://t.co/LdYEqbVu5Y
It is now from five states (up from yesterday's three) that we have obtained forged elector documents created by Republicans. pic.twitter.com/ydTgSGzIRx
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) January 12, 2022
How did the Trump DOJ know that two weeks earlier, Republicans in at least five states had created forged elector documents? pic.twitter.com/s9Qumx8zKb
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) January 12, 2022
American Oversight's collection of fake elector letters can be seen here:https://t.co/eop3jCeBMm
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) January 12, 2022
What you are saying is, someone at the Department of Justice engineered this plan for states to forge documents and submit them to the federal government.
— JEFF (@CreechJeff) January 12, 2022
And the justice department has done nothing to hold whoever it is accountable.
Nor pursue Justice for the forged documents
State electors met Dec 14…same day Barr resignedhttps://t.co/nIjxPFiUeD
— PamIAm 🙏- 🌎✌🏼 🗽& ⚖️ 4all (@Iamgood_man) January 12, 2022
The January 6th Committee documents suggest some involvement by Mark Meadows in the scheme to assemble slates of fake electors for Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/TvxJ11gMwR
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) January 13, 2022
The fake certificates were created by Republicans in SEVEN swing states who sought to replace valid presidential electors w/ a pro-Trump slate, per docs obtained by @weareoversight.
— Zachary Cohen (@ZcohenCNN) January 13, 2022
Story w/ @MarshallCohen builds on recent reporting from @MaddowBlog. https://t.co/3iRuMqRSCA
Short(ish) thread on one interesting detail concerning the bizarre falsified elector documents Republicans sent in to the National Archives in various Biden-won states after the 2020 election, falsely asserting that those states had chosen Republican/Trump electors:
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) January 13, 2022
In 5 states (at least) - AZ, GA, NV, MI, WI - Republicans sent in fake electoral slates that looked quite alike: Same font, spacing, formatting, and language. The similarity suggests a coordinated effort or that, at least, they were all working from the same document template.
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) January 13, 2022
Here's the nut graf language, for example, from the Arizona document:
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) January 13, 2022
"WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, being the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Arizona, do hereby certify the following:" pic.twitter.com/p2yeJeYSsF
Here's Georgia:
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) January 13, 2022
"WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, being the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Georgia, do hereby certify the following:" pic.twitter.com/8btL6nwqCK
Here's Nevada:
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) January 13, 2022
"WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, being the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Nevada, do hereby certify the following:" pic.twitter.com/lySVP1Te34
Here's Michigan:
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) January 13, 2022
"WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, being the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Michigan, do hereby certify the following:" pic.twitter.com/kiapYnCz3c
Here's Wisconsin:
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) January 13, 2022
"WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, being the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Wisconsin, do hereby certify the following:" pic.twitter.com/kHwFUXzMjH
You can see that all five look exactly alike.
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) January 13, 2022
That said! Republicans in 2 other states also sent in similar documents. Formatting, spacing, font and most of the language in the documents are the same as the others.
Their weird documents were also sent to the Archives.
But!...
In those two other states, that key paragraph bluntly asserting these people were "the duly elected and qualified electors... from the state of X" (when in fact they were not!) is changed. And qualified.
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) January 13, 2022
The two states are: New Mexico and Pennsylvania.
Here's the key change in the New Mexico document:
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) January 13, 2022
"WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, on the understanding that it might later be determined that we are the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President... from the State of New Mexico, do hereby certify the following:" pic.twitter.com/4UmVjQjuEx
The key change in the Pennsylvania document says
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) January 13, 2022
"WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, on the understanding that if, as a result of a final non-appealable Court Order or other proceeding prescribed by law, we are ultimately recognized as being the duly elected and qualified Electors..." pic.twitter.com/cYnFzF8iQ0
Unlike the other five states, those key changes from NM and PA make clear (with unique language for each state) that their weirdo assertions about being electors were actually contingent on the eventuality that it might someday be determined that they were the real electors.
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) January 13, 2022
To be clear, it's still bizarre that NM & PA Republicans did this. They weren't real electors and they were never going to be, short of a coup.
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) January 13, 2022
But in each of those states, someone took time to break the template and soften the... uh... outright forgery part of it.
How come?
All credit to @weareoversight for their seminal work here!
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) January 13, 2022
And to @nicholaswu12 at politico and all the other reporters running this to ground, especially @ruelaswritings in AZ.@ZcohenCNN and @MarshallCohen had a great piece on this last night at CNN.
Lots more to figure out.
The #Jan6 attack on Capitol was meant to delay the electoral count long enough for 🧵
— Zhi Zhu (@ZhiZhuWeb) January 13, 2022
"Only later, as Congress prepared to count electoral votes, did legislators in some of those states begin talking unofficially about “decertifying” the Biden electors."https://t.co/OlP6ldolta
"Trump’s demand—that statehouses fire their voters and hand him the votes—was so far beyond the bounds of normal politics that politicians found it difficult to conceive."#TrumpCoupAttempthttps://t.co/jsUgdt9gC8
— Zhi Zhu (@ZhiZhuWeb) January 13, 2022
In red states, GOP is taking control of the electors away from the voters.
— Zhi Zhu (@ZhiZhuWeb) January 13, 2022
They're using the Bush v Gore SCOTUS decision as precedent for overturning the will of the people.
They ran out of time to do this in 2020. (#Jan6)
Will they succeed in 2024?https://t.co/ETN2tOOZDq
No doubt Mike Pence also received the bizarro Electoral College slates from Trump “electors” and @kyledcheney figured out pretty quickly how he dodged introducing them at all during the January 6th proceedings. https://t.co/3KOITC09s0
— Robert Alexander (@onuprof) January 13, 2022
It appears the January 6th committee is spot on. pic.twitter.com/IY9wBxPDfk
— Justagirl (@hollym1126) January 13, 2022
"That matter is part of an investigation into election-related matters; however, we're not currently in a position to share specifics as the review remains ongoing," Mukomel said.https://t.co/63c8WJvoKk
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) January 12, 2022
My sentiments exactly. This was coordinated at the highest level. These battleground States didn't just decide to do this themselves. There was a coordinated attack before and after the election to keep Trump in power.https://t.co/30GxCujeQQ
— Don Chambers (@dechambers) January 13, 2022
NEW In Arizona, journalism can be a team sport. GOP State Rep. Jake Hoffman refused to answer 12News photojournalist's question (which I provided) re why he signed phony declaration in 2020 that Arizona electors voted for Trump. Watch as AZRepublic's @ruelaswritings folos up... pic.twitter.com/Qp3YOLyBl9
— Brahm Resnik (@brahmresnik) January 13, 2022
Politico has the fake certificates of ascertainment from Michigan and Arizona that were submitted to the National Archives in an attempt to put their fake electors in play. Two very different documents: https://t.co/p07YQhlo5T pic.twitter.com/ShR27fzNAj
— Arieh Kovler (@ariehkovler) January 10, 2022
Updates: Here’s the list of phony GOP electors the state Republican Party submitted to Congress for the Georgia election Trump didn’t win. The document was obtained by @weareoversight. #gapol https://t.co/v74JjhN1vr pic.twitter.com/jXxsh63mXA
— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) January 13, 2022
No comments:
Post a Comment