The U.S. House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot said it has served subpoenas to 14 individuals who allegedly met in December 2020 as part of a plan to act as "alternate electors" for former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
These individuals were first called into question in March 2021 when American Oversight, a nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog group, said it acquired fraudulent electoral certificates from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the group reported. The certificates allegedly showed an attempt to replace official presidential electors from the states, which Biden won, with pro-Trump electors.
With the newly issued subpoenas, the House committee is looking to gather information regarding how the fake electoral certificates may have been part of an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to a press release issued Friday. The committee believes the 14 subpoenaed individuals will be able to shed light on how the electors met and who organized the meetings.
A caveat was placed with the New Mexico and Pennsylvania election certificates that indicated they were submitted in case Trump won court battles that would have turned the outcome in those states his way, the Associated Press reported. In the other five states, though, the electors offered no such caveat, presenting themselves as qualified to submit the certificates.
"We believe the individuals we have subpoenaed today have information about how these so-called alternate electors met and who was behind that scheme," said Representative Bennie G. Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who is chairing the committee. "We encourage them to cooperate with the Select Committee's investigation to get answers about January 6th for the American people and help ensure nothing like that day ever happens again."
The House committee says it has information that the subpoenaed individuals met on December 14, 2020, more than a month after Election Day. After those meetings, the groups allegedly submitted bogus slates of Electoral College votes, with the certificates then transmitted to Congress by the "alternate electors," the committee's press release stated.
Multiple people advising Trump or his campaign then used the fake electoral certificates as justification for delaying or preventing the certification of the election in the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021, the press release added.
Federal proscutors are also reviewing the fake electoral certificates, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco told CNN on Tuesday. She said the Department of Justice was "going to follow the facts and the law, wherever they lead, to address conduct of any kind and at any level that is part of an assault on our democracy."
The New Mexico Attorney General's Office has said it is reviewing the fake certificates and has also referred the case to the Justice Department, CNN added.
Wisconsin's Elections Commission has been considering a complaint about the fake electors for almost a year, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. On Wednesday, lawyers in that state sent a letter to the commission saying they will soon take the case to court if plans are not released on how the case will be handled.
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