More information sought about fake Trump electors
WASHINGTON — Law enforcement officials, members of Congress and the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol are digging deeper into the role that fake slates of electors played in efforts by former President Donald Trump to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election.
In recent days, the state attorneys general in Michigan and New Mexico have asked the Justice Department to investigate fake slates of electors that falsely claimed Trump, not Joe Biden, had won their states. Representative Mark Pocan, Democrat of Wisconsin, wrote to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland on Friday demanding an investigation into the same issue in his state.
And this week, members of the House committee scrutinizing the Jan. 6 riot said that they, too, were examining the part that the bogus electoral slates played in Trump’s scheme to overturn the election.
“We want to look at the fraudulent activity that was contained in the preparation of these fake Electoral College certificates, and then we want to look to see to what extent this was part of a comprehensive plan to overthrow the 2020 election,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the committee, told reporters on Capitol Hill.
“There’s no doubt that those people were engaged in a constitutional fraud.”
The false slates, put forth in seven contested swing states, appear to have been part of a strategy by Trump’s allies to disrupt the normal workings of the Electoral College. After election officials in those states sent official lists of electors who had voted for Biden to the Electoral College, the fake slates claimed Trump had won.
“I’ve had people in my district ask me what’s being done with these folks,” said Pocan, who forwarded the names of the 10 fake proTrump electors from his state to Garland in his letter demanding an investigation. “Enough people kept bringing it up. If people think they can get away with some scam, they’ll try another and another.”
Attorney General Dana Nessel of Michigan said she believed there was enough evidence to charge 16 Republicans in her state for submitting false certificates claiming Trump won her state’s electoral votes in 2020. She said she had handed over to federal prosecutors the results of a yearlong investigation into Republicans who signed documents in December 2020 falsely identifying themselves as Michigan’s electors. New Mexico’s attorney general, Hector Balderas Jr., referred similar allegations to federal law enforcement. And a local prosecutor in Wisconsin also recommended that state or federal prosecutors investigate fake electors in that state.
Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of the committee, called the fake electors a “concern.” They could also play a role as the committee considers making criminal referrals.
If investigators determine that the fake slates were meant to improperly influence the election, those who created them could in theory be charged with falsifying voting documents, mail fraud or even a conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Thompson’s committee last week received more than 700 pages of documents from the Trump White House related to various attempts to challenge the election, according to a National Archives log, including a draft of an executive order calling for extreme measures.
The draft executive order, which called for the military to seize voting machines, was the subject of heated debate inside the White House in December, as pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and his former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn promoted wild conspiracies.