No he didn’t.
The media previously reported on a scheme to replace legitimate Biden electors with fake Trump electors.
On January 20, 2022, CNN reported (here) that this scheme was organized and run by Rudy Guiliani and Trump campaign officials, who “were far more involved than previously known,” and it was “a core tenet of the broader plot” to overturn the election.
“Giuliani and his allies coordinated the nuts-and-bolts … on a state-by-state level,” CNN was told by three sources with knowledge of the matter. The activities included “planning calls between Trump campaign officials and GOP state operatives,” lining up fake electors, securing meeting rooms in statehouses for the fake electors to cast their fake electoral votes, and circulating drafts of the fake certificates sent to the National Archives.
Trump and some of his top advisers encouraged the scheme while Giuliani and Trump campaign officials choreographed it behind the scenes, according to CNN‘s sources. CNN learned one of the fake Michigan electors even boasted at “a recent event hosted by a local Republican organization that the Trump campaign directed the entire operation.”
The scheme was an essential part of Trump’s plan to get his vice president to throw out legitimate electoral votes Biden and replace them with illegitimate Trump electors from states where Trump lost. The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection and state attorney generals likely will be looking at whether laws were broken and anyone should be prosecuted.
That possibility worried some of the fake electors. In two of the seven targeted states, they pressed the Trump campaign to insert language in the fake certificates making their electoral votes contingent on Trump winning his court challenges. However, less cautious fake electors in five other states don’t have that legal protection.
The director of a Michigan nonpartisan group that promotes fair elections told CNN, “This is existential. This about the very fundamental institutions of our government — whether we can vote at all, whether we have any power whatsoever. It is a completely different time that we are facing in 2020 and 2022. It really feels urgent. It is a battle of a completely different kind. It is massive, it is coordinated at a national level. It is much more threatening.”
That’s the perception of countless Democrats, and is the motivating force behind the so-far-stymied Democratic push in Congress for federal legislation to protect voting rights and the integrity of elections.
The efforts of Trump and his inner circle to overturn the will of the American people, which were condoned if not actively supported by the Republican Party as a whole and most of its elected officials, constituted an attack on the civil rights of the 81 million Americans who voted for Biden. It opened up the prospect of America becoming a dictatorship.
That’s why it’s important to disqualify Trump from holding office again, prosecute those who broke laws, and disbar the attorneys involved in his illicit schemes to overturn the election. That’s necessary not only to prevent them from getting in a position to attempt this again, but also to establish a deterrent against similar efforts and schemes in the future.
Related story (here): A Georgia prosecutor announced today she is convening a special grand jury to investigate Trump’s election interference. Comment: Trump will call it “a politically motivated witch hunt,” but it’s not if actual crimes were committed. In any case, if charges are brought against him or anyone else, an impartial jury would have to find them guilty, based on evidence, before they could face criminal penalties. A special grand jury only collects evidence, and the prosecutor’s purpose for convening it is to compel witnesses to testify.