Prosecutions of fake electors gain ground in swing states
The chair of the Nevada Republican Party has been indicted. So has the former chair of the Georgia GOP. In Michigan, a former co-chair of the state party is facing charges.
As former President Donald Trump goes on trial in the New York criminal case, other investigations and prosecutions in five crucial swing states are continuing to scrutinize the steps that he and his allies took in trying to circumvent the will of voters after the 2020 election.
The investigations focus largely on the plan to deploy fake electors in states Trump lost. Documents emerging from the state cases highlight divisions among Trump advisers after the 2020 election about whether to use hedging language in the phony certificates they sent to Washington purporting to designate electoral votes for Trump. They also undercut claims by some Trump aides that they played little role in the fake-electors plan.
Georgia, Michigan and Nevada have already brought charges against a total of 25 fake electors, including current and former Republican Party leaders in those states. The Georgia case, led by Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, has gone further, bringing charges against Trump himself and a number of his advisers.
Investigations are also playing out in Wisconsin as well as in Arizona, where state Attorney General Kris Mayes is expected to bring charges soon. Grand jury subpoenas were recently issued to the people who acted as fake electors in Arizona, including Kelli Ward, a former state Republican chair. Mike Roman, a former Trump campaign official who is already facing charges in Georgia, is also among those subpoenaed in the Arizona case.
There are so many state investigations going on that “they all kind of run together,” said Manny Arora, a lawyer for Kenneth Chesebro, an architect of the fake-electors plan who has emerged as a key witness in the investigations.
“Most of the jurisdictions are keeping it local and leaving the big stuff to the feds,” Arora said, adding that he did not expect most of the state cases to “be quite as sweeping as Georgia.”
Evidence has also emerged from state civil suits brought on behalf of legitimate 2020 electors for Joe Biden, and from the federal case brought by Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting Trump.
The state-level inquiries are being led by Democrats, with one exception. Pete Skandalakis, a Republican who leads a nonpartisan state agency in Georgia, said last week that he would investigate Lt. Gov. Burt Jones over his role as a fake elector. Willis was disqualified from investigating Jones because she had hosted a fundraiser for one of Jones' political opponents.
Whether any of the cases will significantly affect Trump's 2024 campaign is unclear.