Rudy Giuliani led Trump campaign officials in a plot to install 'alternate' electors in seven states won by President Joe Biden...
Rudy Giuliani led Trump campaign officials in a plot to install 'alternate' electors in seven states won by President Joe Biden as a way to tamper with the Electoral College results on January 6.
CNN reported Thursday that members of Trump's campaign were far more involved in this scheme than had been previously reported.
Giuliani, a lawyer for Trump's campaign and the former New York City mayor, coordinated the process state-by-state, appearing on at least one planning call, sources told the network.
Rudy Giuliani led a Trump campaign effort to install 'alternate' slates of electors in seven states President Joe Biden won in an effort to meddle with the Electoral College results. CNN reported Thursday that Giuliani and the campaign were more involved than previously thought
President Donald Trump addresses supporters on the morning of January 6. The day of the Capitol attack, Giuliani and other officials hoped Vice President Mike Pence would ignore legitimate electors and instead count the votes of the alternate, pro-Trump ones
The campaign found supporters to join the 'alternate' slates of electors, while securing meeting rooms for them to meet in statehouses on December 14, the day of the official Electoral College meeting.
Afterward, fake certificates naming the pro-Trump slates of electors were sent to the National Archives.
Trump administration officials previewed the plan on the morning of December 14.
'As we speak, today, an alternate slate of electors in the contested states is going to vote and we're going to send those results up to Congress,' Trump's top immigration adviser Stephen Miller said on Fox & Friends that morning.
'This will ensure that all of our legal remedies remain open,' Miller continued. 'That means if we win these cases in the courts, we can direct that these alternate electors be certified.'
However, only the documents from Pennsylvania and New Mexico contained language that said the slates of electors were stand-ins if the court overturned Biden's wins.
The documents from Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada falsely stated that the electors were legitimate.
Sam DeMarco, one of the pro-Trump faux electors from Pennsylvania, who is the chairman of the Allegheny County Republican Committee, representing the Pittsburgh area, told CNN that he and several other electors asked the campaign to change the language to make clear they were not contesting the will of the voters.
The language DeMarco and others demanded was added at the last minute with the Trump campaign relenting.
The debate showed that even top Trump allies had misgivings about trying to tamper with the election results.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who is running for governor, told CNN that his office looked into the matter but decided the fake certificate of electors was not an illegal forgery.
'There "fake ballots" included a conditional clause that they were only to be used if a court overturned the results in Pennsylvania, which did not happen,' Shapiro told CNN in a statement. 'Though their rhetoric and policy were intentionally misleading and purposefully damaging to our democracy, based on our initial review, our office does not believe this meets the legal standards for forgery.'
In Michigan, where there wasn't conditional language on the documents, the state's Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel said on MSNBC last week that it could be a crime.
'Under state law, I think clearly you have forgery of a public record, which is a 14-year offense, and election law forgery, which is a five-year offense,' Nessel said.
The next step after lining up the groups of fake electors was hoping that Vice President Mike Pence would choose these 'alternate' electors on January 6 when he was chairing the joint session of Congress to finalize the election result.
Pence, worried about the scheme, had his team carefully word what he would say during the certification process to only recognize the legitimate members of the Electoral College.
No comments