Cracks open between Republicans as alleged scheme to falsify 2020 election documents emerges

[marmar]

Cracks open between Republicans as alleged scheme to falsify 2020 election documents emerges
The scheme "may go all the way to the top,” Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel said on MSNBC

By LINDSAY BEYERSTEIN
PUBLISHED JANUARY 21, 2022 5:00AM


As Merrick Garland explained in his big speech earlier this month, the way to dismantle a criminal conspiracy is to start at the bottom and work up. It's a slow process, but it can be devastatingly effective.

That's why the fifty-nine Republicans who cast fake electoral votes are a gift to investigators seeking to understand Trump's role in the plot to overturn the 2020 election. These pseudo-electors impersonated public officials in a bid to overturn a presidential election.

They signed forged paperwork and sent it to the government. It's an open-and-shut case, but investigators could parlay this into something much bigger than prison terms for a few dozen local GOP operatives.

In a group of nearly 60 people facing serious prison time, at least some of them will be willing to implicate the higher ups to save themselves. ...........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/01/21/cracks-open-between-as-alleged-scheme-to-falsify-2020-documents-emerges_partner/

[lagomorph777]

1. Encouraging idea. I hope this is fully exploited.

I don't have a lot of hope though.

[Gore1FL]

2. I expect more flips than a gymnastic exposition.

I just hope this ramps up even further.

[Delmette2.0]

9. I hope that for any who flips this happens.

They are barred from holding ANY public office.

[usaf-vet]

18. Did they use the USPS to propagate any of this fraud? If so charge them postal violations.

[Delmette2.0]

25. The fake electorial votes may have been mailed.

Good idea.

[EYESORE 9001]

3. I'm happy to see that they're poring over documentation this way

The fake certificates come from seven states, but they have nearly identical verbiage and formatting. Real certificates of ascertainment all look slightly different because there's no standardized form. Yet the fake ones all look alike. The question: Who supplied the template?

Not only are they evil and incompetent, they’re also lazy.

[soldierant]

39. Presumably the Heritage Foundation. Or a similar think tank.

[jmowreader]

42. One theory floating around is that Rudy and Sidney did it

[spanone]

4. The entire party was in on the insurrection....

[Baitball Blogger]

5. First squaker gets a free flight out of jail.

Just say'n.

[gab13by13]

6. I said this when the story broke,

These people are not Trump's unwashed cult, they are not going to jail for Trump, they will sing like canaries.

This investigation, if it is happening at DOJ, will lead to the White House.

[L. Coyote]

7. Some of the electors refused to be involved, Rudy had to find fake fake electors.

The ones who were wise enough not to commit a felony might cooperate too.

[thesquanderer]

15. So it was Rudy all along. Someone needs to rewrite the "Agatha All Along" song. n/t

[L. Coyote]

16. It was Rudy ACTING AS the legal agent of the President of the United States, albeit

representing the citizen, #FailedCoupGuy, not the office holder in any official way.

At this point it is becoming obvious that the many cases against them are slam dunk easy prosecutions and there only hope is subversive jury members.

[SWBTATTReg]

8. No peace, no rest for any of these thugs, who literally tried to steal our votes (indirectly

via fake electoral votes) not won legally. Don't settle w/ any of these thugs, cost them their rights to ever run for office, cost them their rights to ever vote again, as well as prison. Don't settle for scraps, don't sideline serious charges to catch the bigger fish, catch them all period.

[MomInTheCrowd]

19. Yes. None of them should get off by singing...

[gab13by13]

10. Rudy was the GoFer,

I believe that John Eastman or another lawyer wrote the documents.

[OMGWTF]

22. I saw one elector quoted as saying they got the docs from the Trump campaign.

The stupidest thing Trump has ever done was to run for president.

[Scrivener7]

11. I sure wish, a year later, they'd get around to the parlaying.

It's an open-and-shut case, but investigators could parlay this into something much bigger than prison terms for a few dozen local GOP operatives.

"Could parlay."

[YoshidaYui]

12. Seeing the former President in Handcuffs would be awesome ...

Seeing other Republican Senators in hand cuffs... price less!!

[asiliveandbreathe]

13. May testimony reveal state and federal legislators also involved

in the insurrection to subvert the US Government function of electing a US President..open the flood gates..surely these politicians were involved..

Patience grasshopper..

[dchill]

14. "...may go all the way to the top..."

It started at the top and flowed all the way down.

[fightforfreedom]

17. People will sing to save themselves.

It happens all the time.

[Bondor]

20. Honest question:

If a couple Republican senators go down, do we get a few months with a real D majority in the senate?

[Tommymac]

33. Takes 2/3rds majority vote to kick out a Senator or Rep. So no.

In general. being convicted of a crime does not disqualify one from being an elected official or running for office. Special cases for the 14th not withstanding.

It's the voters who decide...for over 230 years, so far.

[BobTheSubgenius]

21. My wife REALLY wants DOJ et al get on with it and charge any and all that deserve it.

First, I pointed out how excruciatingly long it took to unravel the Watergate conspiracy. She mentioned the recent decision to not shield "Presidential" documents with a sort of "What more do they need?" To which I said that I've not seen even a guess as to how many documents are in question, nor how many pages they contain.

Finally, I said that there are potentially thousands of pages, and I'd be shocked if the number was in the low hundreds. After each one is examined, it may have to be cross-checked against thousands of others. It is an extremely long and labourious project. Getting it right is much more important than getting it fast...although this afternoon would be fine with me.

[Moebym]

26. We all want swift justice

But the Justice Department doesn't work at the speed we'd like.

[BobTheSubgenius]

27. Justice in general often seems glacially slow.

[calimary]

23. GOOD. Divide and conquer!

They’ve yet to come up with ANY ideas that actually help anybody but the rich (more tax cuts!). They didn’t even HAVE a platform of ideas and proposals in 2020. Just two words: “donald trump”. And they don’t have anything this time except “let’s-beat-up-on-Biden” and their favorite moldie-oldie fall-back about tax cuts for the rich.

[malaise]

24. Lock them up

The Party's Over!

[spanone]

28. These 59 traitors need to be tried and jailed.

As much as the people who stormed the Capitol, these people are insurrectionists,

[Tommymac]

34. And unless the 14th can be used, they may be members of Congress for a long time to come.

Voters decide. Takes 2/3rds majority to remove a Senator or Rep. Being a convicted criminal is not a barrier to running or holding office.

[Kaleva]

29. TFG White House said over a year ago that the Trump campaign was coordinating this

"ELECTION 2020|Dec 14, 2020,11:31am EST|60,045 views
Trump Campaign Assembling Alternate Electors In Key States In Far-Fetched Attempt To Overturn Election

Alison Durkee

Updated Dec 14, 2020, 03:22pm EST
TOPLINE In an unprecedented move, groups of self-styled “electors” arranged by the Trump campaign in battleground states won by President-elect Joe Biden will meet Monday to vote for President Trump and send results claiming he won the states’ presidential elections to Congress, White House advisor Stephen Miller said Monday, the latest of the president’s far-fetched attempts to challenge Biden’s victory—which, like his previous efforts, is almost entirely certain to fail."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/12/14/trump-campaign-assembling-alternate-electors-in-key-states-in-far-fetched-attempt-to-overturn-election/?sh=7f53e213213a

[crickets]

31. 👍 Great find! nt

[empedocles]

45. ty

[crickets]

30. Might want to keep an eye on Kelli Ward.

There is so much to keep track of, I completely forgot about Gohmert's crazy lawsuit - partly due to no one taking it very seriously at the time given everything else that was going on.

Arizona state Rep. Jake Hoffman refused to answer a reporter's question about how he came to cast a fake vote for Trump, nervously referring all questions to "the party chair."

The chair of the Arizona GOP is Dr. Kelli Ward, who was not only a fake elector but also Gohmert's co-plaintiff. A number of the fake electors are high-ranking officials in their state parties. Wisconsin's fake votes were even submitted by the state party's chair on Wisconsin GOP letterhead.

Wow. She jumped in way, way over her head. This is my nominee for the first relatively-bigger-fish-or-at-least-adjacent-to-them person to finally realize, "holy crap, what have I done and can I testify to help myself? crapcrapcrap" and start singing for leniency. Then again, maybe she'll sink all the way to the bottom with the rest. With this crowd, who knows?

A couple of reports from late December, 2020:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mike-pence-sued-by-louie-gohmert-kelli-ward-pack-of-republicans-to-force-vp-to-pick-trump-electors-on-jan-6 [more names of those involved]

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/531823-gop-lawmakers-sue-pence-in-bid-to-overturn-biden-win

[orangecrush]

32. Oh, KICK!!!!

[lees1975]

35. If you think you will find enough Republicans with the integrity to do the right thing here

in the US Congress, you are out of touch.

I think we are about to find out exactly who is left in the GOP who is willing to do the right thing and is not motivated by their selfish ambition for power and influence. What I think will happen, as it has with every other immoral, illegal, corrupt thing they've done since the orange headed buffoon has been around, is that they will circle the wagons and try to protect the influential and wealthy among the signers of those forged documents.

[monkeyman1]

37. I this congress , good damn luck with that program !!

[NJCher]

36. talk about a "seat of your pants" operation

Here's a line from the Slate article:

Weeks before the electoral vote, Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows was texting about how much he loved a plan to seat fake electors.

This was weeks before the electroral vote, which would be a few weeks after he lost the election and for which his only strategy was to claim it was stolen.

Meadows saying he "loved" the plan means that he was listening to an idea, so they were improvising as they went along.

If you're going to take over a country, especially a country as big and diverse as the U.S., don't you kinda' think you plan all this out a little better in the first place? And if you're going to do fake docs, at least investigate what the penalty is. Investigate what format you're faking in the first place instead of handing out a template to everyone going along with the plan.

I put more into a grocery shopping trip than these clowns did for a takeover of a country.

[monkeyman1]

38. Jeeze , that's a good read !!!

[NJCher]

40. Thanks, monkeyman

It's nice to get some feedback.

[monkeyman1]

41. no problem ! go friends all over the place & sent it to them too !

[Deminpenn]

43. Nixon's "plumbers" (the Watergate burglars) talking is what cracked

open that scandal. For awhile they were bought off with hush money payments, then E Howard Hunt wanted more money and when he didn't get it, turned on his benefactors, iirc.

[Icanthinkformyself]

44. The fake electors scheme

is at the core of the conspiracy to defraud the United Sates. It is not just a piece, it is the very center. Getting one or more of the forgers to confess and flip may very well bring the GQP crashing down, considering the high party positions held by many of them. Let us hope that such devastation ensues and we watch in silence, smiling in a state of schadenfreude bliss.

[empedocles]

46. ty