Details Of Bogus Elector Scheme Submitted To Department Of Justice

0
1771

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) announced this week that she’d submitted information to federal authorities including the House committee investigating the Capitol riot regarding her state’s part of a scheme to essentially falsify electoral votes on behalf of Donald Trump. Benson also contacted Attorney General Merrick Garland at the U.S. Justice Department, she said. In short, that multi-state scheme to assemble faked electoral votes on Trump’s behalf involved groups of Republicans gathering in certain states where Biden was victorious and signing off on claims that they were the actual electoral college members from their states. Documentation of these claims was submitted to federal authorities — although none of them had any legitimate legal grounding.

The information that Benson included in her communications with federal officials included the fact that an audio recording has emerged revealing a co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party to have stated that the fake electoral vote plot in Michigan was undertaken at the direction of the Trump campaign. Benson also noted, among other points, that then-Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis was affiliated with a group that was involved with the fake elector plot. Ellis served as a special counsel to the Thomas More Society, and that group’s so-called Amistad Project worked on trying to get the Republicans claiming to be Trump electors into Michigan’s state Capitol to sign off on the claims. Actual electoral college members were supposed to meet there.

There’s more, too — like the fact that a report outlining supposed election fraud in Michigan was obtained by ex-Trump attorney Sidney Powell before a judge allowed for its release. These circumstances tie the former president’s team to what went on. Benson commented as follows:

‘As more information has surfaced about the attempts to thwart the will of Michigan’s 5.5 million voters, we have been able to connect the dots between activities that occurred here in Michigan and at the national level to overturn what was the most secure election in our state’s history. As the efforts to overturn the election ultimately led to the Jan. 6 attack on the United States Capitol, it is my firm belief that all Americans have a patriotic duty to [our] nation and our democracy to support the Committee [investigating the Capitol riot] in their work.’

At the federal level, conservative lawyer John Eastman — whose lawyer recently admitted in court that he was working at Trump’s behalf at key points surrounding January 6 — put forward a plan that involved then-Vice President Mike Pence rejecting Biden’s wins from certain states because of the supposedly competing slates of electoral votes. Again, however: these Trump votes were not legitimate. In addition, Pence (in his role overseeing the proceedings in Congress to certify the presidential election outcome) did not actually possess the legally recognized power to throw out any electoral votes. Now, state authorities in Wisconsin, Michigan, and New Mexico (alongside officials elsewhere) have taken note of the fake electoral vote scheme. At the federal level, deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco has confirmed that federal prosecutors are examining the situation.

In Michigan, state Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) previously formally referred the matter of her state’s part of the fake elector scheme to federal prosecutors, and she has noted that potential crimes inherent in the actions under scrutiny include forging public records.