These Republican fake electors pose for photo at party headquarters.
Ryan Randazzo
Arizona Republic
The people who falsely claimed to be Arizona’s 2020 electors might not be named in the federal indictment of Donald Trump, but they still face serious legal peril, as do the people from Trump’s team who directed them, some experts say.
GOP members in seven states where Joe Biden won the election, including Arizona, falsely signed documents in 2020 in an attempt to thwart the Electoral College. The federal indictment of Trump said this was part of a criminal conspiracy aimed at keeping him in office.
The Michigan electors were each charged with eight felonies and released on $1,000 bonds.
At least eight of the 16 fake electors in Georgia have been offered immunity.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes’ office has said Arizona’s electors are
under investigation. The office declined further comment Friday.
Joshua Stanton, counsel at Perry Law who is based in Washington, D.C., said that it’s not just the fake electors who face jeopardy, but those who might have misled those people before they signed the documents claiming to be the rightful electors.
“There is significant evidence that a lot of these false electors it seems across the country were aware that Trump had definitely lost, that his litigation attempts were bogus, and that this was really being used as part of an effort, an illegal effort, to overturn the election,” said Stanton, who clerked at the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee.
At a previous firm he represented recording artists, professional athletes, actors and business executives.
He said prosecuting the electors might depend on what they were told by people working with Trump to overturn the election, and whether they thought they were only to be used if the elections in those states were overturned by the courts for some reason. They in fact were used even though court challenges to overturn the state elections all failed.
