We’ve known for several weeks that Republicans in multiple states created forged election materials, pretending to be “duly elected and qualified electors,” and sent the documents to, among others, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Archivist, as if the fake materials were legitimate. Among the unanswered questions, however, is what kind of scrutiny the scheme might receive.
If GOP officials hoped the controversy would quietly fade away, they have reason to be disappointed.
As we discussed last month, the National Archives has its own investigatory team, which launched a review into at least part of the effort to submit forged materials to the institution. Soon after, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco confirmed that the Justice Department is “looking at” the matter, which is part of an “ongoing” investigation. State attorneys general have also taken a keen interest in the burgeoning scandal.
And then, of course, there’s the Jan. 6 committee. NBC News reported overnight:
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol subpoenaed a half-dozen people Tuesday who it says were involved in organizing slates of “alternate electors” to challenge President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Note, it was a few weeks ago when the bipartisan select committee issued subpoenas to over a dozen of the so-called “alternate” electors themselves, seeking their cooperation in the investigation. As was clear at the time, it seemed inevitable that the panel’s members would also want to talk to the operatives who organized the plot and/or provided these Republicans with the templates to be filled out as part of the scheme.
After all, we know this was not a freelance operation. It’d be a different kind of story if assorted Trump fans coincidentally engaged in a live-action-role-playing fantasy, simultaneously and independently coming up with the idea of creating fraudulent election materials as keepsakes.
With this in mind, the Jan. 6 committee’s new round of subpoenas were sent to those believed to have either known about the fake-electors scheme or have participated in the larger effort. The half-dozen Republicans who received the subpoenas represent an interesting group of partisans. From the committee’s press statement: Ward is of particular interest, in part because of her efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona, and also because she filed a lawsuit two weeks ago in the hopes of preventing the Jan. 6 committee from accessing her phone records. 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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