US prosecutors investigate Republicans who sent fake Trump electors to Congress

Federal prosecutors have launched an investigation into the attempt by Republicans in seven presidential battleground states won by Joe Biden in 2020 to subvert the election result by sending bogus slates of Donald Trump electors to Congress.

The other five states sent signed statements to Washington giving the appearance that Trump had won despite clear and verified counts placing Biden on top.

The fake statement then carries the names and signatures of 16 fake electors who claimed falsely to have cast their electoral college votes for Trump when in fact they had no legal standing to do so. The move was in direct contravention to the actual vote in Georgia, confirmed in multiple counts, which Biden won by 11,779 votes.

The fact that Republicans left a paper trail by sending their phony certificates to both Congress and the National Archives suggest that they may now face legal peril. The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection has also recently begun to focus on the fake Trump electors, and particularly those who organized the plot.

A figure of special interest is Rudy Giuliani, who acted as a lawyer for the Trump campaign and who has been reported to have spearheaded the fake elector strategy. The January 6 committee sent Giuliani a subpoena letter earlier this month specifically referring to his efforts instigating the ploy.

Another area of intense interest is the draft letter prepared in December 2020 by Jeffrey Clark, a relatively lowly justice department official, who tried to persuade Georgia and six other states won by Biden to call back their electors from Congress and consider replacing them with Trump electors. The letter was never officially sent after the acting US attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, refused to play ball.