Trump was involved in a scheme to send fake slates of electors, the Jan. 6 select committee says.- Trump also pressure
Georgia election officials to overturn state election results.
The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection is preparing to highlight how former President Donald Trump was involved in a scheme to send fake slates of electors as part of an effort to overturn the
The committee intends to present new details during its Tuesday hearing into this scheme that involved Trump and his allies sending pro-Trump electors to cast electoral college votes for Trump in states where then-presidential candidate Joe Biden won its popular vote.
Earlier this month, reports of the scheme were first revealed after The Washington Post and CNN obtained an email that was dated December 13, 2020, that showed how Trump's campaign gave specific instructions to certain individuals on how the fake electors could go into the Georgia State Capitol and sign certificates declaring they were there to cast the votes for Trump, despite Biden winning in that state.
"I must ask for your complete discretion in this process," Robert Sinners, Trump's campaign elections operations director in Georgia, wrote in the email to the individuals. "Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result — a win in Georgia for President Trump — but will be hampered unless we have complete secrecy and discretion."
The Trump campaign targeted Georgia because it was one of the battleground states where Trump lost.
In December 2020, a month after the election won by Democratic nominee Joe Biden, small groups of Republican members gathered in states Biden won and claimed they had authority to act as electors for Trump — despite Trump's having lost the state vote. They lacked the certificate needed that actually confers authority to be an elector, and were dismissed as stunts by a party whose nominee refused to concede.
But the effort, as recently reported, sought to topple the normal process by which votes are counted and verified in America, where local officials double-check votes and the transmission process of reporting them, followed by state officials who certify the election's result as correct.
—Republican Party of Arizona (@AZGOP) December 14, 2020
The Sinners email comes as the Justice Department investigates if Trump broke any laws by attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and pressure state election officials to keep him in office.
Georgia's Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, is also conducting her own investigation. She is examining whether Trump violated the law by pressuring Georgia election officials to overturn the state's election results.
In May, a special grand jury was selected to hear evidence on Willis's investigation. Georgia's Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, was asked to appear to testify before the grand jury. Following the 2020 presidential elections, Trump called and asked him to "find" enough votes to overturn the state's election result. Raffensperger is also expected to testify at Tuesday's hearing, which is the fourth hearing the committee will hold this month.
Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a member of the House select committee, said the hearing would reveal more evidence of Trump's concerted efforts to pressure Georgia officials.
"We'll also again show evidence about what his own lawyers came to think about this scheme. And we'll show courageous state officials who stood up and said they wouldn't go along with this plan to either call legislatures back into session or decertify the results for Joe Biden," Schiff said on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday.