Gov. DeSantis floated OK’ing slate of electors month before Eastman
Ex-Donald Trump attorney John Eastman’s comments to Georgia legislators in December 2020 that the Florida Legislature had been prepared to adopt its own slate of presidential electors came a month after Gov. Ron DeSantis was among the first Republicans to float the idea.
Two days after the Nov. 3 election, when votes were still being tallied in several states, DeSantis told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, “I would also tell [Republicans], especially if you’re in those states that have Republican legislatures like Pennsylvania and Michigan and all these places, call your state representatives and your state senators.
“Under Article 2 of the Constitution, presidential electors are done by the legislators and the schemes they create and the framework,” DeSantis continued. “And if there’s departure from that, if they’re not following law, if they’re ignoring the law, then they can provide remedies as well.”
DeSantis’ then-spokesman, Fred Piccolo, said the comments were made “in the context of a race for president.”
A current spokesperson for DeSantis has not responded to a request for comment on whether something similar had been planned in Florida, and if DeSantis still backed doing so in other states.
Eastman’s statement, played during Tuesday’s hearing of the House Jan. 6 committee, was one of the first indications that Florida lawmakers could have been planning to adopt their own slate of “alternate” Trump electors to the Electoral College if Biden had won the state.
Such a strategy ultimately wasn’t necessary
in Florida, as former President Trump won the state by more than 3 percentage points over Joe Biden.
But some Republicans in Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia, where Biden had defeated Trump, had been preparing to go forward with such a plan, according to evidence obtained by the committee.
“You could also do what the Florida Legislature was prepared to do, which is to adopt a slate of electors yourself,” Eastman told Republicans in Georgia, as he falsely claimed fraud in the state that Biden won by about 12,000 votes.
“I don’t think it’s just your authority to do that,” Eastman said. “But quite frankly, I think you have a duty to do that to protect the integrity of the election here in Georgia.” The plan to get legislatures to select Trump electors in states that Biden won has received increased attention in the last week, due to the televised House committee hearings into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.
Pennsylvania GOP voters this month also nominated state Sen. Doug Mastriano as their candidate for governor, bringing renewed scrutiny to a resolution he issued in late November 2020 for the legislature to name its own set of Trump electors despite Biden’s victory there.
Witnesses testified to the Jan. 6 committee this week that Trump was directly involved in the alternate elector plan. Elections officials from Georgia and Arizona also testified about being threatened by Trump supporters for not delivering their states to Trump.