We learned months ago that Republicans in several states created forged election materials after Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat, pretending to be “duly elected and qualified electors.” The Republicans then sent the documents to, among others, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Archivist, as if the fake materials were legitimate. They were not.
Among the unanswered questions is what kind of scrutiny the scheme — and those responsible for executing the plan — might receive.
Updating our earlier coverage, the answer continues to come into sharper focus. The National Archives, for example, has its own investigatory team, which launched a review into at least part of the effort to submit forged materials to the institution. State attorneys general have also taken a keen interest in the scandal, as has the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. As of last week, there’s even a civil dimension to this.
But perhaps most important to those facing possible legal liability is the Justice Department’s investigation.
In late January, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco confirmed that the Justice Department is “looking at” the matter, as part of an “ongoing” investigation. According to a New York Times report published this afternoon, federal investigators have “stepped up” their criminal probe.
A federal grand jury in Washington has started issuing subpoenas in recent weeks to people linked to the alternate elector plan, requesting information about several lawyers including Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and one of his chief legal advisers, John Eastman, one of the people said. The subpoenas also seek information on other pro-Trump lawyers like Jenna Ellis, who worked with Mr. Giuliani, and Kenneth Chesebro, who wrote memos supporting the elector scheme in the weeks after the election.
The Times’ reporting has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News. That said, these apparent revelations probably ought to make members of Team Trump rather nervous.
Remember, it was in early February that the public started to learn the degree to which the former president’s team was directly connected to the fake electors scheme. The New York Times reported at the time on a Trump campaign lawyer in Wisconsin receiving a memo in November 2020 “setting out what became the rationale for an audacious strategy: to put in place alternate slates of electors in states where President Donald J. Trump was trying to overturn his loss.” That memo, sent just two weeks after Election Day 2020, was written by Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump lawyer referenced in today’s reporting. Three weeks later, the same Trump lawyer sent a second memo, shortly before actual electors were set to cast their votes, offering a step-by-step guide on what the fake electors would have to do. He’s obviously not alone. Eastman reportedly contacted state legislators, falsely advising them that they had the authority to certify fake electors, while Giuliani has been accused of helping coordinate the fake electors scheme. And now, if the Times’ reporting is correct, a federal grand jury has issued subpoenas. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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