By Richard Ruelas | Arizona Republic
The day before rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, an Arizona lawmaker, who had signed a document falsely asserting he was one of the state’s presidential electors, sent a letter to Vice President Mike Pence asking him to not accept the state’s official electoral votes.
The two-page letter sent by Rep. Jake Hoffman on Jan. 5, 2021, had the same aim as the rioters would the next day: delaying the official certification of Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election and the victory of President Joe Biden.
Hoffman’s letter asked Pence to order that Arizona’s electors not be decided by the popular vote of the citizens, but instead by the members of the state Legislature.
Hoffman, in the letter, asked Pence to “seek clarification from the Arizona legislature as to which slate of electors were proper and accurate.”
Arizona was one of seven states in which groups of Trump supporters sent documents to the U.S. Senate falsely claiming to represent a slate of electors that should be counted, thereby providing a reason to turn the normally-routine counting of electoral votes into chaos.
In his letter to Pence, Hoffman did not mention that he was one of the 11 Republicans who falsely called themselves Arizona’s “duly elected and qualified electors.”
The letter was released to The Republic on Wednesday in response to a public records request. The letter was first obtained by MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” on Tuesday.
