Arizona’s Trump backers refuse to explain alternate electors plan
One said he felt justified declaring himself an elector and attempting to throw Arizona’s votes to former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election because of the unprecedented questions surrounding how ballots were cast and counted.
Another said she thought that signing the documents empowering herself to cast Arizona’s electoral college votes for Trump was merely a backup plan.
A third said he was fulfilling his duty as an elector.
But none would detail exactly how they and the other official Trump electors came to sign a document that was sent to Congress with a false avowal that they constituted Arizona’s official vote in the Electoral College.
That document, and recent revelations from the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, raise new questions about how the group was organized and how the false document came to exist.
Interviews and text messages previously obtained by The Arizona Republic have detailed how White House officials and Trump campaign officials extensively pressured Republican leaders in Arizona to take other steps to dismiss the results of the general election after Joe Biden’s win.
A Republic report in December documented how Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani repeatedly spoke with Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and asked him, in vain, to replace the state’s electors — the people who were bound to certify Biden’s win.
More:White House phone calls, baseless fraud charges: The origins of the Arizona election review
But new questions emerged this week about whether efforts in various states, including Arizona, to create slates of fraudulent electors were similarly coordinated.
On Dec. 14, 2020, a group of prominent Republicans, including the party’s chair, Kelli Ward, former lawmaker Anthony Kern and incoming legislator Jake Hoffman signed a document declaring themselves the state’s electors, in favor of Trump.
All 11 people were listed on the general election ballot as the would-be electors for Trump.
But Trump had lost Arizona. Gov. Doug Ducey had certified the election results in late November. By state statute, the only electors who mattered were those pledged to cast their votes for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, as they did Dec. 14, 2020, at noon.
The document the Republicans signed, obtained from the National Archives last year by the group American Oversight, overlooked that detail.
It described the “undersigned” as the “duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Arizona …”
The vote was sent to Congress, the state Republican Party said at the time. It was accompanied by a letter, signed by 22 Republican state lawmakers, that asked the Trump slate be accepted as the official votes — or, in the alternative, that no votes be accepted until the completion of a forensic audit.
A news release from the Arizona Republican Party on the day of the signing said the Trump electors met to “cast their votes and send them to Congress where they are to be opened and counted beginning on January 6.”
In a video posted to the Arizona Republican Party’s YouTube…
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