After members of Donald Trump’s team launched a scheme to overturn the Republican’s election defeat, they seemed to realize that they’d need fake electors to make the plot work. Indeed, fake electors would be a key ingredient to challenging the legitimate election results.
And so, as regular readers probably know, Republicans in several states created forged election materials, pretending to be “duly elected and qualified electors.” They 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.
As scrutiny of the controversy intensified, we also learned that members of the former president’s team were directly involved in trying to execute this scheme. What’s been less clear, however, was the degree to which they also knew that their gambit had no legal legitimacy.
The Washington Post reported on internal campaign emails and memos, including some from Trump attorney John Eastman, which shed light on how the concerted strategy was executed.
The documents show that Trump’s team pushed ahead and urged the electors to meet — then pressured Pence to cite the alternate Trump slates — even as various Trump lawyers acknowledged privately that they did not have legal validity and the gatherings had not been in compliance with state laws.
Imagine being one of the fake electors and learning now that the people who pushed the scheme — Republicans in key positions whom you trusted — didn’t even have confidence that the ridiculous anti-election gambit was legal. It’s a reminder that too many regular folks who put their faith in Team Trump seem to get burned in the end.
Also notable is the speed with which the plot took shape. From the Post’s reporting:
The emails show that some Trump advisers began strategizing just days after the election about how to construct a legal argument for advancing their own electors, even though laws in every state hold that electors are determined by the certified vote of the people. In particular, they started mulling whether state legislatures, which in a number of key states were controlled by the GOP, could appoint Trump electors even if the certified results showed that Biden won.
All of this will be a focal point of today’s hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. The lawmaker who’s taking the lead today is House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who told The Los Angeles Times that there will be new information, including details about former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ involvement in the plot.
The California Democrat went on to tell Rachel on the show last night that the panel will also present evidence of the former president’s role “in this whole scheme of pressuring state legislators to overturn the election.”
Meanwhile, let’s also not forget that the fake electors, their organizers, and their scheme are facing investigations from the National Archives, state attorneys general, as well as the Jan. 6 committee.
On top of those probes, 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 from last month, federal investigators have “stepped up” their criminal probe of the fake electors’ gambit.
The Washington Post reported earlier this month that the Justice Department “has sent subpoenas and sought interviews with some of the 15 people around the country who were slated to be Trump electors but were replaced on the day of the electoral college vote.”
Watch this space.
The House Jan. 6 committee is holding its fourth public hearing on Tuesday, June 21 at 1 p.m. ET. Get expert analysis in real-time on our liveblog at msnbc.com/jan6hearings.
