I came across a post in a Michigan community that mentioned this, and i asked if it really happened because it seems so crazy that Republican collaborators would directly mail in fake documents saying Trump won states he lost and I hadn’t even really heard about it.
But this is exactly what happened, as I found out today after looking for more corroborating sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot
Trump republicans in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, and New Mexico forged false elector certificates and actually mailed in those forged electoral certificates to the national archives, that were examined and found to be forgeries, with trump, Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman as the ring leaders calling hundreds of Republicans to ask them to directly commit election fraud and forgery.
Some of them said yes. A bunch of them said yes, actually.
Well look at that. Conspiracy to defraud the elections of the United States.
I guess the #GOP was right about election fraud all along, except they were the group doing it & their accusations were just projection.
Yea, stop the steal was real, but being perpetrated by Republicans and conservatives, and Americans and its political institutions actually did stop the steal trump and his campaign officials attempted.
Like straight up. Straight up forgery and electoral fraud, even more direct than that Georgia call.
My head is spinning about it
Keep in mind that their goal was and continues to be discrediting the democratic process. They are willing to give up short term gains for long term power.
They have, imo, successfully convinced enough people that elections cannot be trusted. It’s why we need more and more people to be election officials but the threat of violence against them is making it challenging.
Fraud and Forgery are by themselves a Crime (I believe even in the US) even without the whole conspiracy to defraud the elections.
Surelly those who committed them can already be prosecuted and convicted if found guilty?!
I feel like I just learned that Arizona didn’t prosecute anyone either. So it feels like the bad people are learning more about the process and how to cheat better. Pretty fucked.
I was pretty heartened to find out the national archives inspected and then rejected all of the false certificates sent in, so I’m going with the glass half full thing here.
I would have liked some convictions as well, but it looks like Michigan is looking to prosecute people, if I understand correctly. I don’t know. It seems like the whole prosecution of the false elector plot is still going on.
Oh yeah no it was an actual attempted coup. He should probably be executed for it. Instead he’s running again
He should be facing far more serious legal consequences, suffice to say. Rather than this piecemeal, “ooo, maybe we can get him on a technicality” bullshit. If a democracy is incapable of even protecting itself from such a hamfisted coup, how could it hope to protect itself from one orchestrated by a person who isn’t pants on head stupid.
I just wanted to ask, did you happen to get the phrase ‘pants on head stupid’ from zero punctuation back in the day? It’s the only place I’ve ever heard that term before and I still use it all the time
The problem is that Attorney General Garland, for reasons known only to himself, wanted to wait until after the Jan 6th committee issued its report before turning the full power of the DOJ on prosecuting Trump.
I think he did it for political cover; to avoid the appearance of a political motive; but I think it’s obvious now that it was a mistake both because Trump was always going to claim political persecution regardless, and because they are now in real danger of running out of time.
Aren’t Fraud and Forgery actual crimes in the US?!
The current right wing talking point is its not fraud because it wasn’t successful lol. Even if it was successful, it still wasn’t fraud because trump believed the election was stolen from him. Oh and state legislator can pick any electors they want at anytime.
It’s ridiculous
“That didn’t happen.
And if it did, it wasn’t fraud.
And if it was, it didn’t work.
And if it had, it would be justified.
And if it wasn’t, legislators could elect anyone.
And if they did, we would be right.”
Aside from the last line, it fits The Narcissist’s Prayer pretty well.
IANAL, but yeah. And we should push our reps to ensure that the law is applied fairly.
Why would you try to change the subject to sex? Seems a bit weird, but I’m interested
/s
I remember reading about this; in particular, some fake electors showing up to vote for Trump and being turned away. I was super confused, as a european, because it seemed obvious that this meant that they were impersonating officials.
I asked americans why they hadn’t been arrested. I don’t quite recall the answers, but it was something about them just making a gesture, or just larping. It’s still just weird to me.
All those us shenanigans are quite strange. They seem to be allowed to do pretty much anything with no consequences whatsoever. Apparently the us has no laws governing what republican politicians are allowed to do.
It took them a year to charge only a small percentage of people in a filmed insurrection…
I’ll shit on people all day, especially for the fact that the judges have been extra lenient in those cases, but it’s far from a small percentage. Of the 1265 defendants that have been named, about 460 of them have been sentenced. Still more that need identified, but 120 cases per year over 3 years isn’t anything to sneeze at (laugh, a little, point maybe, but not sneeze).
The Michigan false electors were indeed criminally charged and they are going through the process now https://michiganadvance.com/2023/12/13/michigan-fake-electors-back-in-court-as-state-elections-director-testifies/
They have been arrested and charged and released on their own recognizance which is much cheaper and less onerous than detaining someone who is not a flight risk in jail until they plead or go to trial.
As of now, if memory serves, pretty much all of the fake electors in Michigan have pleaded out for reduced sentences and cooperation agreements. There are some in Georgia who are still holding out to go to trial, but that’s a completely different case brought by the state as opposed to by the federal government.
You really need to be careful about believing everything you read on Lemmy, especially when it comes to legal information.
Let’s just say that if there were a Lemmy Bar Association, you wouldn’t even have to be particularly literate in order to pass the exam and become a member. Lemmy’s idea of US law is basically whatever some rando thinks makes sense. It’s pretty comical sometimes.
You really need to be careful about believing everything you read on Lemmy nearly anywhere on the internet.
Too many people decide to not vote on entirely skewed cherry-picked drip-drip-drip, downright false often without any fact-checking except a tummy sense of truthiness. That’s how we get these passive hordes staying at home fondling their purity on Election Day, “bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL aMiRitE”.
