Trump campaign officials led by Rudy Giuliani oversaw efforts to get states to submit fake slates of electors in a bid to overturn former President Donald Trump’s loss, CNN reports.
Giuliani and his allies held multiple planning calls with Trump supporters in state governments where the former president lost. Giuliani participated in at least one of the calls.
Sources told CNN that the Trump campaign lined up supporters to fill elector slots and secured meeting rooms for them to meet.
The campaign also circulated drafts of fake election certificates that some states then submitted to the National Archives.
Trump and his aides also publicly encouraged “alternate electors” in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, and New Mexico.
"We fought to seat the electors. The Trump campaign asked us to do that," Meshawn Maddock, co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, said last week in an audio recording obtained by CNN.
"It was Rudy and these misfit characters who started calling the shots," a former Trump campaign staffer told the outlet. "The campaign was throwing enough sh*t at the wall to see what would stick."
House ramps up probe:
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack is increasingly focused on the fake elector scheme, according to Politico.
In at least five of the seven states, electors signed certificates claiming they were “duly elected and qualified” to represent their states.
“We want to look at the fraudulent activity that was contained in the preparation of these fake Electoral College certificates,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the committee, told Politico. “And then we want to look to see to what extent this was part of a comprehensive plan to overthrow the 2020 election.”
Rep. Pete Aguilar, another member, said the certificates could set a “dangerous precedent.”
Calls for federal probe:
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel referred the Michigan case to federal prosecutors.
“This is a crime. This is election fraud,” Nessel told reporters. “And it's many other crimes, as well; both, I believe, at the state and federal level.”
“It's clear to me that this was not independent, rogue actors that were unknowingly doing the same thing as they had done in many other states,” she added.
Rep. Elaine Luria, another Jan. 6 panel member, also said that she hopes that the “full extent of the law” is “used to prosecute anyone trying to falsify any documents, including those.”
