... "some veterans of the Resistance are getting very excited over what they see as an enormous new scandal — what one calls "attempted election fraud on a massive scale" — involving former President Donald Trump's refusal to accept the result of the 2020 election.
... Trump supporters in a few states — Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, and New Mexico —in the days before Dec. 14, 2020, when the Electoral College voted to confirm Joe Biden's victory, (allegedly) forged documents falsely purporting to be Electoral College results for Trump and sent them to the appropriate authorities in Washington and in their home states.
They then planned to use the forgeries to steal the election on Jan. 6, 2021., hoping no one would notice.
It was a "previously unknown, mysteriously coordinated effort to have Republicans in multiple states forge election documents after the last election and present themselves as fake electors to the Electoral College," MSNBC's (Chief Liar) Rachel Maddow said recently.
In an earlier program, referring specifically to Wisconsin, she said, "The fraudulent electors met in a concerted effort to ensure they would be mistaken, as a result of their deliberate forgery and fraud, for Wisconsin's legitimate presidential electors chosen by the mechanism prescribed under the U.S. Constitution and Wisconsin law."
It's actually a lot less exciting than that.
After the Nov. 3, 2020, voting, Trump very publicly challenged the results of the election.
He filed lots of lawsuits, most of which were thrown out.
None succeeded, but some took a while to make their way through the courts.
The law required the Electoral College to meet in the states on Dec. 14, 2020, to approve slates of electors.
Those would then be sent to Washington, where Congress would certify them on Jan. 6, 2021.
On Dec. 14, in the states Joe Biden won, including all the states listed above, electors for Biden met to formalize their votes.
But on the 14th, there were a number of Trump lawsuits still pending in those states.
The Trump team's thinking went like this: The election is still not finally settled.
What if Trump were to win one or more of those suits and a judge were to throw out the results in one or more states?
... Trump would need a slate of electors to cast electoral votes for him.
And by law, the electors had to have voted on Dec. 14. If Trump won a case, and a state's results were thrown out, and Trump had no electors, then the whole election challenge would be a waste.
So in some states, Trump supporters decided to choose electors on Dec. 14 on a contingency basis.
That is, the electors would be selected, and if, at a later date, Trump prevailed in court, and Biden's electors were disqualified, the Trump electors would be presented to Congress on Jan. 6.
... The Trump supporters, often Republican Party officials, met to choose Trump electors on Dec. 14.
... what the Republicans were doing was not a secret.
They announced it.
They invited the press to cover it.
They tweeted about what they did.
There were news accounts of it.
How (Liar) Rachel Maddow came to believe it was "previously unknown" is not clear.
"We were told by the lawyers that if the Republican nominees for the Electoral College did not meet on Dec. 14 and cast their votes, then Trump's lawsuit would be mooted because there would be no remedy available to him if he prevailed," said David Shafer, head of the Georgia Republican Party, who took part and signed the documents.
"So we met to preserve his remedies if he prevailed."
The group met in the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta, the same day the Biden electors were meeting elsewhere in the building.
The GOP had invited reporters to come.
Some did, from both local and national outlets.
You can read this account of the meeting — "As electoral college formalizes Biden's win, Trump backers hold their own vote" — in the Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-backers-electoral-college/2020/12/14/f0fcc59c-3e52-11eb-9453-fc36ba051781_story.html
Just to make sure everyone knew what was happening, Shafer tweeted what had been done within an hour after the meeting's conclusion.
"Because the president's lawsuit contesting the Georgia election is still pending, the Republican nominees for presidential elector met today at noon in the State Capitol and cast their votes for president and vice president," Shafer tweeted.
"Had we not met today and cast our votes, the president's pending election contest would have been effectively mooted.
Our action today preserves his rights under Georgia law."
Republicans in the other states did the same thing and explained so publicly.
The Washington Post talked to GOP officials in other states who gave the same explanation.
... there was no secrecy involved and no claims that the electors chosen were the real electors.
There was only the explanation that if Trump won his lawsuits, and a court threw out the election results, then the Trump electors would be available.
There was simply no fraud involved.
But Maddow and others also accuse the Republicans of forgery.
What about that?
... Some states made explicit reference to the contingent nature of the electors.
For example, the New Mexico documents said, "We, the undersigned, on the understanding that it might later be determined that we are the duly elected and qualified electors for president and vice president of the United States of America from the state of New Mexico, do hereby certify the following ..."
That made it much more explicit that the document was contingent, not an actual claim to be the genuine electors at that moment.
I asked Shafer why he did not choose some sort of contingency language — why he chose instead to use the exact language of the winner's electoral slate.
Why not change the forms a bit to indicate that it was a provisional slate of electors?
"We completed the forms exactly as prescribed by law," Shafer said.
"We did not alter them because we were told that any alterations would be grounds for dismissing the lawsuit for lack of available remedy."
Whatever it was, it was not a forgery.
... It wasn't secret.
It wasn't fraud.
It wasn't forgery.
... there were no "dual slates."
The Republicans in Georgia and other states had clearly chosen electors on a contingency basis, contingent on a court ruling in Trump's favor and overturning the election results.
That did not happen.
Therefore, the Trump electors were not the real Georgia electors.
... no state legislature overturned the (election) results ...
... Republicans chose the slates on a contingency basis, contingent on a specific event happening.
That event did not happen.
So the slates had no value.
... Republicans in the states (did not) engaged in secrecy, fraud, and forgery in a wild attempt to fool the Electoral College into electing Trump."
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
The Democrat's new fake 2020 Trump election scandal du jour, by Byron York
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