2023-08-03 09:33:19
The indictment accuses Trump and anonymous associates of persuading people in seven specific states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — to pose as legitimately selected voters.
The landmark indictment accusing former President Donald Trump of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election alleges, among other things, that Trump and his advisers orchestrated an elaborate plot to undermine the workings of the Electoral College, one of the least understood elements of the United States electoral system.
The indictment, released Tuesday, accuses Trump of trying to create confusion over the election result, which he lost to President Joe Biden, by having people in seven states submit false election results, known as electoral votes, to Congress.
The hope, according to prosecutors, was that the appearance of the false results along with the officially verified results would give Trump’s allies in Congress a justification for claiming that the election results were unclear and delay certification of victory. from Biden.
At the very least, the delay would have given Trump’s team more time to challenge the result. If the bogus results were ultimately accepted, a result most experts say would have been illegal, the swing in votes in the seven selected states would have made Trump the winner.
In the end, Congress ignored the fake electoral votes and certified Biden’s victory, but only following a mob of thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, forcing the evacuation of Congress, injuring many police officers and contributing to several deaths. .
trump responds
Trump, who is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, issued a statement angrily denouncing the decision to charge him with “election interference” and denouncing the charges once morest him as “false.”
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“The lawlessness of these persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian and dictatorial regimes,” he said. “President Trump has always followed the law and the Constitution, with the advice of many highly qualified attorneys.”
The indictment Tuesday was filed in federal court in Washington. Trump also faces federal indictment in Florida for his withholding of classified national security documents following leaving office, and state-level charges in New York for orchestrating an illegal scheme to pay secret money to a former adult film actress during the 2016 presidential election. Trump is also widely expected to soon face state charges in Georgia related to his effort to reverse the result of that state’s 2020 presidential election.
The Electoral College
The indictment accuses Trump and anonymous associates of persuading people in seven specific states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — to pose as legitimately selected voters. Electors are people who play a key role in the US presidential election.
The United States elects presidents through a complex system that involves an entity called the Electoral College, which exists for the sole purpose of electing the next president every four years.
The Electoral College is made up of 538 individual voters, distributed among the states and the District of Columbia. Before Election Day, each candidate’s parties name a list of electors, who pledge to vote for that party’s candidate in the Electoral College if their candidate wins the election in their state. Pledged voters whose candidate loses have no authority to cast electoral votes.
On Election Day, all 50 states and the District of Columbia hold elections in accordance with local election laws. When Americans cast their ballots for president, they’re not technically voting for a specific candidate. Rather, they are voting for the list of electors who have pledged to vote for their preferred candidate when the Electoral College meets.
federal requirements
In accordance with federal law, presidential elections are held on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November. After the election, federal law further requires officials in each state to determine the identities of the electors who were chosen by the voters.
This determination is the practical equivalent of declaring a candidate the winner of a state election, and this is how the process is often characterized in the media. In all but two states, electoral votes are awarded on a winner-take-all basis. In Maine and Nebraska, each candidate may receive a partial share of the state’s votes.
Then, on a date also specified by federal law, all the electors from each state and the District of Columbia convene to formally cast their ballots for president. Those votes are counted and certified by the state executive, usually the governor, and sent to Congress.
On the sixth day of January following the election, members of both houses of Congress meet in joint session, with the incumbent vice president overseeing the formal tally of electoral votes. To win the presidency, a candidate must receive a majority of the 538 electoral votes, that is, 270 or more.
In a typical US election, every part of this process following voter determination is considered a formality. Once the results are declared in each state, it’s easy to determine which candidate will receive the most votes when the Electoral College convenes, and that person will be considered president-elect.
However, there was nothing typical regarding the followingmath of the 2020 presidential election.
fraud claims
The indictment alleges that Trump and his associates attempted to subvert the Electoral College following the November 3, 2020 election.
Trump faces 4 counts Thursday for alleged interference in elections
Immediately following it became apparent that he had lost the election, Trump and his allies began spreading claims that the results in many of the states Biden carried had been rigged. Those claims were not true and were ultimately proven false in dozens of lawsuits.
However, while hoping to persuade some state officials to change their results, Trump associates began contacting people who had been the former president’s promised voters in several select states.
According to the indictment, Trump and his associates persuaded these individuals to agree to meet on the same day as certified voters and hold an election in which they would declare that Trump had received their electoral votes, even though they had no legal authority to do so. cast electoral votes.
Change of plans
At first, the effort was characterized as an attempt to “preserve” an alternate list of voters in each of these states in case efforts to get officials to overturn state election results were successful. Some of the people who participated in the scheme did so in the belief that their votes would not be sent to Congress unless their states officially declared Trump the winner.
However, according to prosecutors, the plan changed in the weeks following the election. The indictment presents evidence that Trump and his associates ultimately decided they would have the bogus vote counts sent to Congress regardless of the outcome of their efforts to change the election results in individual states.
The indictment alleges that a lawyer working on Trump’s behalf provided detailed instructions for the creation of fraudulent ballots that would be sent to Congress. In the end, seven fake voter lists sent results to Washington before the joint session of Congress on January 6.
Statewide Prosecutions
Although the fake electoral ballots were not accepted by Congress, many of the people who signed the fake certifications have been charged with crimes under state law or remain under investigation.
In Michigan, the state attorney general has charged 16 people with forgery and conspiracy to commit forgery for claiming to be a duly chosen electorate for Trump and submitting false ballots to Congress.
In Georgia, an investigation into the submission of false electoral ballots is ongoing, but at least eight of the 16 people have accepted plea deals with prosecutors that will allow them to avoid prosecution. The rest may still face charges.
Prosecutors in Arizona, New Mexico and Wisconsin are conducting investigations
In Pennsylvania, the fake voters demanded that the document they signed include language specifying that they only claimed to be a duly elected elector if state officials changed the election results to declare Trump the winner. Therefore, they are expected to avoid criminal prosecution.
In Nevada, prosecutors have announced they will not pursue a case once morest that state’s bogus voters, saying state law does not support any charge.
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