After the 2020 election, Republicans in Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin created forgeries of official election documents, made out to show Trump won those states, and sent those counterfeit documents to the U.S. Senate and National Archives. (Read MSNBC story here.)
Regarding the Michigan forgeries, a Detroit TV station reported, “The documents were obtained by Politico and show that 16 Republicans forged and signed papers attempting to certify the election for former President Donald Trump.” Participants in the scheme included a Republican National Committee member, a county clerk, and a state representative. (Read story here.)
In Arizona, the forgeries bore the official state seal. People magazine said Arizona’s secretary of state sent them to the state attorney general for “possible prosecution.” (Read their story here.) Newsweek reported “legal action was taken against those responsible.” (Read their story here.) Rolling Stone magazine described the Arizona forgers as a “sovereign citizen group.” (Read their story here.)
Salon suggested the scheme may have been orchestrated by Trump and his lieutenants. (Read their story here.) Daily Kos named Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, in connection with the matter. (Read their story here.) And Rachel Maddow, quoted in Daily Beast, noted the fake certificates from multiple states “all match, exactly,” suggesting a coordinated effort. (Read that story here.)
Everyone knows what forgeries are. They’re fraud, and forgers are criminals. These revelations take the GOP’s illegitimate efforts to overturn the election into the realm of crime.
Updates (1/14/22): The Michigan forgers could get 14 years in prison under state law, but citing evidence of a multi-state conspiracy, the state attorney general has asked federal authorities to open a criminal investigation. A watchdog group says Republicans in Georgia, New Mexico, Nevada, and Pennsylvania also submitted fake elector certificates, and a Wisconsin lawyer involved in the scheme is now facing ethics charges. Read that story here.
Meanwhile, CNN offers more details about the scheme here, and reports that Trump lawyer John Eastman, whom I’ve written about previously, “authored a memo outlining a six-step plan for Pence to overturn the election … [that] included throwing out results from seven states because they allegedly had competing electors.” The fake certificates appear to be part of that plan. This CNN article suggests they were “an elaborate public relations stunt,” but if intended to be used in a scheme to actually overturn the election, they were much more than that.
They are not forgeries. They maybe competing slates of electors. They mabe political speech. They lacked Governors or Secretary of State signatures so they apparently were not accepted by the President of the Senate or the archivist. Did the VP reject them and do more than be purely a master of ceremony? The archivist rejected the perhaps only Congress could reject two of them and the alternative slates should have been presented. There have been alternative slates presented to Congress by different groups in states before and these may have been improper but they are not forgeries.
By your reasoning, if you print facsimiles of $20 bills on your computer printer and try to buy groceries with them, they’re not counterfeit, they’re “alternative” currency. Tell that to the judge, and see what he says.