At the heart of the plan was an effort to empower Mr. Trump’s allies in Congress to hand him the election.
Under the Constitution, if the Electoral College deadlocks or if no candidate receives a majority of its votes, the House of Representatives decides the victor.
Each state delegation casts a single vote in these so-called “contingent elections.” Under that scenario, Mr. Trump would almost certainly have won.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/us/politics/jan-6-fake-trump-electors.html
This week the January 6 Committee received more than 700 pages of documents from the Trump White House related to various attempts to challenge the election, including a draft of an executive order calling for extreme measures.
The draft executive order called for the military to seize voting machines and deploy the National Guard, was the subject of heated debate inside the White House in December, as the pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn promoted wild conspiracies about voting machines. Others in the room, including the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, repeatedly and aggressively pushed back on the ideas being proposed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/us/politics/jan-6-fake-trump-electors.html
Attorney General Dana Nessel of Michigan said this week that she believed there was enough evidence to charge 16 Republicans in her state for submitting false certificates claiming Mr. Trump won her state’s electoral votes in 2020.
She said she had handed over to federal prosecutors the results of a yearlong investigation into Republicans who signed documents in December 2020 falsely identifying themselves as Michigan’s electors.
New Mexico’s attorney general, Hector Balderas Jr., referred similar allegations to federal law enforcement. And a local prosecutor in Wisconsin also recommended that state or federal prosecutors investigate fake electors in that state. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/us/politics/jan-6-fake-trump-electors.html
NEWS TO USE...."Meta-verse"
The metaverse — a vision of the internet becoming a kind of alternate 3D space that people move through via an avatar — became a hot trend last year. Facebook embraced the idea and changed its name to Meta.
THE SCHEME.....a coordinated effort to convene fraudulent GOP electors in multiple states
The Trump campaign played a role in directing several State GOP's to hold their own elector meetings, describing it at the time as a way to preserve the defeated president’s legal options as he fought doomed court battles to overturn the results.
The Trump campaign lined up supporters to fill elector slots, secured meeting rooms in statehouses for the fake electors to meet and circulated drafts of fake certificates.
Trump campaign officials, led by Rudy Giuliani, oversaw efforts in December 2020 to put forward illegitimate electors from seven states that Trump lost. In five of those states — Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia — those electors then signed certificates claiming they were “duly elected and qualified” to represent their states. New Mexico and Pennsylvania also participated.
The evidence points toward a coordinated effort to convene GOP electors in multiple states Trump lost and have them declare themselves authentic electors for that state. The forms the electors used in different locations were nearly identical, from their wording to their fonts.
When those court battles failed, Vice President Mike Pence would introduce the unofficial pro-Trump electors to cast Biden’s victory into doubt the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.
Washington (CNN) Trump campaign officials, led by Rudy Giuliani, oversaw efforts in December 2020 to put forward illegitimate electors from seven states that Trump lost, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the scheme. States - Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada and New Mexico.
.......members of former President Donald Trump's campaign team were far more involved than previously known in the plan, a core tenet of the broader plot to overturn President Joe Biden's victory when Congress counted the electoral votes on January 6.
POLITICO ...The false-electors to the ELECTORAL COLLEGE push was well-known at the time, but it’s drawn fresh scrutiny amid indications that the select committee has received documents from multiple states shedding new light on the efforts.
Michigan’s top prosecutor, Attorney General Dana Nessel, recently suggested she’s been investigating the submission of illegitimate GOP electors for a year.
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch (right) has refused to wear a mask in court despite pleas from Chief Justice John Roberts, according to a report. Last fall, amid a decline in Covid-19 cases, the court resumed in-person arguments for the first time, and none chose to wear a mask except Justice Sonia Sotomayor , who is 67 and has diabetes.
But earlier this month when the court returned to the bench following the Omicron surge over the holidays, Sotomayor made it clear she did not feel safe in close proximity with the others unless they were masked.
Roberts then reportedly asked the other justices to mask up so that Sotomayor could return, but Gorsuch, who sits directly next to her, remained obstinate.
Sotomayor has thus continued to join court business by phone and has not stepped back into the court (she is missing from a court sketch, inset). https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ushome/index.html