Ene. 6 committee subpoenas fake Trump electors in 7 states

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WASHINGTON >> The House committee investigating the insurgency in the U.S. Capitol subpoenaed more than a dozen individuals today who say it wrongly tried to declare Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 election in seven swing states.

The panel is seeking information and testimony from 14 people it says have encountered and submitted false Electoral College certificates declaring Trump to have won Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to a letter from Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the committee. President Joe Biden won in all seven states.

“We believe the individuals we are subpoenaing today have information about how these so-called alternative voters met and who was behind that scheme,” Thompson said in the letter. “We encourage them to work with the Select Committee’s investigation to get answers about January 6 for American citizens and help ensure that nothing similar happens that day.”

The nine -member panel said it obtained information that identified groups of individuals on Dec. 14, 2020 – more than a month after Election Day – in seven states. The individuals, according to the congressional investigation, submitted fake records of Electoral College votes for Trump. “Alternate voters” from those seven states then sent the certificates to Congress, where some of Trump’s advisers used them to justify delaying or blocking election certification during the joint session of Congress in Jan. 6, 2021.

Lies about election fraud from the former president and his allies sparked a deadly uprising in the Capitol building that day, as a violent mob cut off the certification of Electoral College results. .

Last March, American Oversight, a watchdog group, obtained the certificates in question submitted by Republicans in seven states. In two of them, New Mexico and Pennsylvania, fake voters added a caveat saying the certificate was submitted in case they were later identified as duly elected, qualified voters. That would only be possible if Trump won any of the several dozens of legal battles he waged against those states in the weeks after the election.

In the other five states, however, Republicans have proved that they are their state’s deservedly elected and qualified voters.

U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in an interview with CNN this week that the Justice Department has received referrals from lawmakers about fake certifications, and prosecutors are now “looking into those. “

An Associated Press analysis of every potential case of voter fraud in six of the battlefield states Trump disputed found fewer than 475 – a number that would make no difference in the 2020 presidential election.

Biden won Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and their 79 votes in Electoral College with a combined 311,257 votes out of 25.5 million ballots elected for president. The disputed ballots represent only 0.15% of his margin of victory in those states.

Fake electors are the latest subpoena in the extensive investigation the committee has been conducting since it came together last summer. The congressional investigation examined Trump’s family members and allies, members of Congress and even social media groups accused of continuing election misinformation and allowing it to spread widely.

The committee plans to move to a more public -facing phase of its work over the next few months. Lawmakers will conduct hearings to document to the American public the most detailed and complete analysis of the individuals and events that led to the uprising in the Capitol.

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