How Fake Electors Are Next Tool Of Election Subversion

it was december 1960 and in one state hawaii the presidential race between richard nixon and john f kennedy was still too close to call and the recount was mired in litigation so when the electoral college's voting deadline came around both candidate selectors sent their certifications to washington just to be ready for any outcome jfk won that recount and on january the 4th hawaii's republican governor certified the democrats slate of electors in fact as vice president nixon presided over the counting of those votes for his opponent in the senate that must have been painful and that's just some of the weirdness behind america's electoral college it's an archaic and very wonky system that sometimes awards the presidency to the candidate with fewer votes hello george w bush hi donald j trump but could it actually be used to overturn an election we are learning more and more every day how hard the trump team tried with a little inspiration from that 1960 case that seems to have been the plan for january the 6th for then vice president mike pence to use his ceremonial role overseeing the count of electoral votes to toss out biden electors from states where trump had falsely claimed election fraud a scenario laid out in the now famous memos written by pro-trump lawyer john eastman part of that plan hinged on pence receiving not just biden's slate of electors in those swing states but trump's alternate electors as well and having to decide which ones to count trump aide stephen miller made the case in december 2020 on fox and friends you have an alternate state of electors in a state like say wisconsin or in a state like georgia and we'll make sure that those results are sent up side by side to congress so that we have the opportunity every day between now and january 20th to say that slate of electors in the contested states is the slate that should be certified the thing is there is no such thing as an alternate elector once the actual electors meet which in 2020 was december the 14th electors for the winning candidate in a state gather to sign a certificate of ascertainment a notarized document that confirms their candidate one and send it to the national archives who inspect it log it and pass it on to congress the only way trump's electors in any given state could sign that certificate was if trump had won the state but trump's people were losing all of their court cases they had no credible evidence to back up their fraud allegations they understood that as long as the election disputes were being decided by officials with a sense of obligation to the facts they would lose michigan's gop slate of electors learned that lesson on december the 14th 2020 when they tried to enter the state capital to certify donald trump as the winner in a state he had lost by more than 150 000 votes a conscientious police officer told them the real electors are already here capital is closed unless you have an office here to confront business today or if you are taking part in the electoral college process anybody else michigan republicans did the next best thing a group of them faked a victory according to documents obtained by the non-profit watchdog american oversight those electors got together and drafted a separate certificate of ascertainment a document full of lies they said they were the duly elected and qualified electors for president and vice president of the united states of america from the state of michigan they were not they said they had convened in the capital to do their civic duty they had not remember that police officer saw to it that they could not convene in the capital and they said that donald trump was the winner of michigan's 16 electoral votes he was not then they forwarded that document to the senate and to the national archives calling it quote michigan's electoral votes for president and vice president it was not it was a fraudulent misrepresentation and as american oversight found it was repeated by pro-trump republicans in multiple states including georgia where two weeks later trump would phone the republican secretary of state and pressure him to find 11 000 votes to overturn joe biden's election in arizona republicans even tweeted a video of themselves holding their romp elector meeting to anoint trump the victor of a state he'd lost in all trump in all trump electors in five states arizona georgia michigan nevada and wisconsin sent near identical forms to the national archives falsely claiming they had certified trump as their state's winner and as american oversight's cache of documents shows republicans tried this ploy in other states too even in new mexico it consistently blew state the blind one by more than 10 percentage points but to be fair to new mexico republicans at least they didn't misrepresent themselves they took the same template used in other states and tweaked the language to make clear that they weren't the duly qualified electors for new mexico but they might be in the future if trump's election fraud claims had panned out that plan they could argue at least had a sort of precedent in the case of hawaii in 1960 pro-trump elected in pennsylvania made a similar tweak to new mexico's and that hedged language may actually save them from prosecution for forging official documents the state attorney general said as much quote these fake ballots included a conditional clause that they were only to be used if a court overturned the results in pennsylvania which did not happen though their rhetoric and policy were intentionally misleading and purposefully damaging to our democracy based on our initial review our office does not believe this meets the legal standards for forgery good for them i guess but not so good for republican electors in those other five states because their attempt to pass these certifications off as real was a white collar coup attempt plain and simple and now finally investigators are paying attention politico reports that the secretaries of state for michigan and arizona have given the congressional january 6 committee copies of the trump elector's false certifications in those states and last week michigan's democratic attorney general dana nessel asked the feds to investigate the republican electors who signed that state's false certification the new mexico attorney general has followed suit with the trump electors in that state and some electors are feeling the heat like arizona republican legislator jake hoffman who evaded questions about how the fake certification plan in his state started was it you eleven yourself to doing this or did someone give you advice on the manner in which you can do it so i'm simply i was one of the electors right right i'm not in charge of the electorate so you wouldn't how did you you wouldn't drew here you you're the person who received the call you showed up right how did you know to show up that day so as i said you can go ahead and ask the party chair the logistics i'm just one of the guys i was just one of them ask the party chair there's a guy in real time realizing he may be in a spot of legal trouble and where is donald trump in all of this well on monday activists resurfaced resurfaced excuse me several of his tweets from before during and after the capital insurrection on january 6 that may seem newly relevant many states want to decertify herod mike can send it back the state want to redo their votes that was the plan it still is trump is endorsing big live proponents in key positions that oversee elections in multiple states that's why what's happening in the senate today is so important as democrats try once again to get voting rights reform past 50 republicans and joe manchin and kissed in cinema well that's why it's so crucial you know when we talk about voting rights it's not just about stopping voter suppression it's also about stopping election subversion will your votes actually count after they've been cast or will they be discarded by a trumpy state legislature or election board that is the key question for 2024 and right now the answer is very much in doubt joining me now is the democratic attorney general for michigan dana nessel thank you so much for coming on the show this evening this is so bizarre it's hard to even come up with an analogy but if i applied to be a cop and then got rejected and then appealed and then started sending around mail identifying myself as a police officer anyway i'd be arrested for impersonating a cop here you had republicans in five states just completely misrepresenting themselves as duly qualified presidential electors it's fraud isn't it why did it take so long to get to this point to investigate this well when you say why did it take so long i mean you know we were made aware of this uh approximately a year ago a little bit less than that and um yeah it's a definitely a very bizarre set of circumstances but of course it takes an investigation um and you know we're we're talking about 16 people we're talking about some pretty significant actors right we have a number of state representatives we have the co-chair of the michigan republican party um who are the signatories to this uh this particular document um and i mean let's be realistic about about what it means right uh when we hear about election fraud occurring during the course of the 2020 election this really is the most massive effort at election fraud i think that we've ever seen in our nation's history you know it was an attempt at least in my state to set aside uh illegally the votes of some 5.5 million people who voted in the state of michigan and simply to submit this false form with the understanding apparently or the hopes that mike pence would pull this slate of electors and not the legitimate slate of electors to be counted um on january the 6th and it's a serious matter and it deserves serious attention there's no question about it it's a good point you make that this is the real election fraud or the real evidence so far of election fraud because with the trump republican party it's always projection they go on about fraud and then it turns out maybe they were the ones doing the fraud today you said there's absolutely enough evidence to charge these electors with a state crime but you've referred the case to the feds at what point would you step in and prosecute them in michigan well i honestly want to see what the department of justice does with this you referred i think to the the eastman memo and to lots of other evidence has been uncovered by the january 6th committee it is clear there is no question in my mind that there is coordination between republican party activists and perhaps the trump campaign in various different swing states uh in an effort to undermine the true election results and if that is the case and it appears that it is it really deserves to be prosecuted by the department of justice because of course they have national jurisdiction and they can they can charge people or they can you know cut deals with people that they then debrief and you know obtain information so that they can really go up the food chain and find out who is it that is behind the orchestration of um really what we see to be a conspiracy to undermine a presidential election and it's better suited from a jurisdictional standpoint for the federal authorities the the federal authorities the department of justice they can go to any state and execute search warrants or issue subpoenas uh or do interviews with witnesses with the threat that the witness is not telling the truth they can actually be charged with it outside of the state of michigan i lose jurisdiction so that's why i think it's so important that this be done on a national level and not necessarily a state-by-state basis yeah and this is an unprecedented uh issue regardless of whatever comes out of these uh gop electives and the doj investigation etc what prevents this dueling states of dueling slates of electors problem from popping up now every four years we need new laws here don't we to prevent this stuff from happening despite what some of your fellow democrats in the senate might think yeah i absolutely think we need new laws that would actually you know prevent a future mike pence say from picking the wrong slate of electors but it's also why i think it's so imperative that these bad actors be prosecuted now theoretically we already have laws against this right these are individuals as you indicated who who you know under threat of perjury here i mean in an official form that was actually filed you know in in the united states senate with the western district chief judge uh of uh you know the federal courts in michigan with michigan secretary of state with the national archivist i mean this forum was filed it is a crime so to me if you're not going to prosecute all of these individuals now then really what's to stop future electors from deciding to undermine elections in every subsequent election to this and why even hold an election in such a massive operation in all 50 states uh in order to hold an election if all you have to do is just send in this fake form and that allows the vice president to pluck that form instead of the legitimate form then what's the point of having a democracy in the first place hi i'm mehdi hussain thanks for checking out our channel on youtube you can see more of the mehdi hassan show by clicking on any of the videos on this screen and make sure you subscribe below to stay up to date on the day's biggest stories thank you for watching

Channel: MSNBC

Views: 63,069

Keywords: Mehdi Hasan

Id: JCgSQYfCs-8

Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 18 2022