Two days before the January 6 insurrection, the Trump campaign’s plan to use fake electors to block President-elect Joe Biden from taking office faced a potentially crippling hiccup: The fake elector certificates from two critical battleground states were stuck in the mail.

So, Trump campaign operatives scrambled to fly copies of the phony certificates from Michigan and Wisconsin to the nation’s capital, relying on a haphazard chain of couriers, as well as help from two Republicans in Congress, to try to get the documents to then-Vice President Mike Pence while he presided over the Electoral College certification.

The operatives even considered chartering a jet to ensure the files reached Washington, DC, in time for the January 6, 2021, proceeding, according to emails and recordings obtained by CNN.

The new details provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the chaotic last-minute effort to keep Donald Trump in office. The fake electors scheme features prominently in special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal indictment against the former president, and some of the officials who were involved have spoken to Smith’s investigators.

  • Don Escobar
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    642 years ago

    I’m going to need all you libtards to show me where on the constitution it says that crimes are illegal or that presidents can’t commit a lil treason every now and then

    Also, what’s taking so long to throw this shitbag in jail already

    • @[email protected]
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      112 years ago

      If SCOTUS rules that sitting presidents are immune from all crimes I want biden to just fucking chainsaw the cheeto in the face. Maybe that’d be a big enough object lesson for maga zombies, but probably not even then.

      • @[email protected]
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        82 years ago

        They’ve got quite the conundrum on their hands. Do they affirm the power of states and the presidency, and strengthen Democrats? Or do they weaken the power of states and the presidency, and weaken Republicans and Trump’s position? Or do they try to have the best of both worlds, and deepen their reputation as corrupt and become even more highly unpopular?

        I hope they’re really frustrated about this.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      caused by none other than his own appointee DeJoy, whose entire goal in the USPS is to dismantle it and privatize it… talk about reaping what you sow lol

      • Nix
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        672 years ago

        Yet he’s still holding the same position for some reason… its baffling he hasnt been replaced

          • @[email protected]
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            432 years ago

            Actually, Biden can’t directly appoint a new Postmaster General. He CAN, however, replace some of the board members that have that ability, though, which he has absolutely no valid reason not to do.

            • @[email protected]
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              192 years ago

              So in other words, he can do what is needed to fire DeJoy, but has chosen not to. The single extra step involved is not a reason not to, and satisfies no one who isn’t already seeking excuses.

              Biden is in a position to replace him. He won’t.

              • @[email protected]
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                72 years ago

                Reports are the DeJoy and Biden are working really well together. Kind of fucked up, but better than before.

              • @[email protected]
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                2 years ago

                So in other words, he can do what is needed to fire DeJoy, but has chosen not to.

                Exactly.

                Biden is in a position to replace him. He won’t.

                Preaching to the choir, my man. I wasn’t disagreeing so much as correcting a detail of your otherwise accurate take 🙂

            • @[email protected]
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              12 years ago

              Biden can only appoint board members when the term expires of an existing board member… He has appointed a few and they currently hold a majority but haven’t yet acted.

      • @[email protected]
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        252 years ago

        My USPS is normally quite good, and it was a drastic difference during that time. I’m so glad my state decided to also provide official drop boxes and a mechanism to track where my ballot is at any given time.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 years ago

          Yeah, my state too. I’m usually good about mailing my ballot two weeks before but I’ve been taking it to the county courthouse drop box instead.

        • @[email protected]
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          52 years ago

          My USPS straight up loses (steals?) like 25% of my packages. It was never great but it hit new lows in the Trump years.

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    142 years ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The emails and recordings also indicate that a top Trump campaign lawyer was part of 11th-hour discussions about delivering the fake elector certificates to Pence, potentially undercutting his testimony to the House select committee that investigated January 6 that he had passed off responsibility and didn’t want to put the former vice president in a difficult spot.

    CNN has obtained audio of Chesebro’s recent interview with Michigan investigators, and exclusively reported earlier this month that he also told them about a December 2020 Oval Office meeting where he briefed Trump about the fake electors plan and how it ties into January 6.

    Chesebro also discussed the episode with Wisconsin investigators last week when he sat for an interview with the attorney general’s office as part of a separate state probe into the fake electors plot, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

    The emails show that Brown and the Wisconsin GOP official were instructed to meet Chesebro at the Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington to hand off the fake elector certificates.

    The details from Chesebro put a finer point on how members of Congress, including a sitting US senator, were involved in making sure the electoral certificates for Trump ended up in Pence’s hands.

    The January 6 committee first revealed last year Johnson’s involvement in trying unsuccessfully to deliver the fake elector certificates to Pence, who announced on the morning of the joint session that it would be unconstitutional to do what Trump wanted and unilaterally overturn the election results.


    The original article contains 2,068 words, the summary contains 248 words. Saved 88%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • LeadersAtWork
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    582 years ago

    Everyone keeps talking about how Biden will likely win against Trump. I don’t disagree. Most of my concern is if Trump is allowed to run just how much more brazen him and his team will be.

    Not to mention how dangerous his supporters may become. Cults aren’t known for their logical and clear understanding.

    • @[email protected]
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      42 years ago

      Sure but this time the National Guard’s reins aren’t held by someone hoping it succeeds. They’re going to need a lot more violence to get past security this time.

    • @[email protected]
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      122 years ago

      The worst part, is the states that have proposed blocking trump from the ballot aren’t really swing states, so it will just embolden his supporters if he wins to be like “they tried to cheat and still lost!”

      Like, a state like Tennessee could not include Biden on the ballots and it wouldn’t change the outcome of the presidential election with how the electoral college votes are calculated.

    • @[email protected]
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      42 years ago

      The cult failed even when Trump had power from within the White House and a corrupt US Attorney General. Much harder now when everyone is on guard and he has no executive power, fortunately.

      2020 was far more risky than 2024 in my opinion.

  • @[email protected]M
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    742 years ago

    Another opportunity to say all I really want is a plugin that replaces every instance of “Ron Johnson” with “That fucker, Ron Johnson.”

  • Melllvar
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    2 years ago

    Two days before the January 6 insurrection, the Trump campaign’s plan to use fake electors to block President-elect Joe Biden from taking office faced a potentially crippling hiccup: The fake elector certificates from two critical battleground states were stuck in the mail

    Reminder that Trump’s Postmaster General sabotaged the post office’s handling capacity in order to interfere with absentee voting.

    • Phoenixz
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      312 years ago

      Yeah how come that everyone already has forgotten about that one? I remember people having problems with receiving critical medication (and that was just a ‘side effect’) because of this yet nobody’s talking about it anymore

      • One of my biggest let downs with Biden is that he didn’t fire that DeJoy asshole in the first week. I get that his team doesn’t think he has authority, but they know there’s a reasonable argument that they do. They should just fire his ass and let it play out, the other side certainly would.

        • @[email protected]
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          42 years ago

          The other side literally did that for a position they had no legal argument for until SCOTUS invented it for them.

  • chingadera
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    2612 years ago

    In true GOP fashion, their destruction of the USPS fucked them over, so they started scrambling, got sloppy, and now there is a recording of what transpired. You cannot write this amount of dumbassery.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter to their voters. It will hopefully matter to enough independents and moderates.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      The crazy thing is that they still have millions of followers after these events come to light. If I saw any politician I like do anything remotely close to this, I’d instantly change my mind.

      I guess this is where the lack of neurons instantly trigger the reptilian “fake news” and “Joespiracy” response.

      • chingadera
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        12 years ago

        It is, indeed. Even crazier to think just how bad they are at an attempted dictatorship and still having faith that they would carry out what their followers are expecting them to without also catastrophicly fucking that up once in complete power.

  • @[email protected]
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    2 years ago

    Mike Pence is a national hero. he knew about these and said he wouldn’t accept them even if delivered. he stood strong when thousands outside wanted to lynch him. As much as I don’t agree with him, he is a true patriot. I don’t think he gets enough credit. without his backbone we would be in an even crazier place.

    • @[email protected]
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      402 years ago

      Hero is too strong a word. It took far too long for him to tell anyone what happened and he hasn’t once called out Trump for being a traitor or trying to overthrow our democracy. During the Republican debates this year he agreed he’d endorse the Republican candidate regardless of who it was, including Trump.

      Pence could have been a hero but he’s tried too hard to stay in the middle and not offend the MAGAts when we’ve really needed the truth.

    • Subverb
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      482 years ago

      Darth Vader didn’t stop being a villain just because he killed the Emperor.

      Pence did one good thing after years of killing Younglings.

      • billwashere
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        102 years ago

        Do I despise Pence for all the shit he did to enable Trump? Yep. Do I applaud him for doing the right thing when it REALLY mattered? You better bet I do. If he kept doing the right thing and spoke truth to power in the face of repercussions I’d think he’d be entitled to be given the respect he’d deserve. People can change and we have to respect it when they do. Do I think Pence would keep doing the right thing? I have no idea but I wouldn’t bet on it. Would he be a better president than Trump? Well just being a functioning adult would qualify. Would that make him a good president? I doubt it. Everybody applauds Reagan but in hindsight he did almost irreparable harm to this country. Some would disagree with me and that’s their right to be wrong 😋

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      Pence just had a few more braincells than the rest in knowing the consequences of this action versus the probability of it actually succeeding. He’s no hero. He’s no Patriot. As always, he is a self-serving sociopath.

      • @[email protected]
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        82 years ago

        Sometimes I wonder if that’s all it takes. For all the stories and myths we have celebrating selfless heroism, perhaps it’s often well placed self preservation.

    • @[email protected]
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      262 years ago

      Hero is the wrong word. He did the bare minimum as to not be a traitor. Which is something I guess given the state of the GOP.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 years ago

        Such a low bar to clear. Don’t commit treason and follow a would be dictator, and have people call you a hero. Sheesh

  • Ghostalmedia
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    292 years ago

    Well, this makes it even more terrifying that this guy is running for office again.

  • @[email protected]
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    382 years ago

    I’m so sick of donnie diapers not only still walking around a free man, he might get back into power again.

  • @[email protected]
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    1162 years ago

    That should be the smoking gun right there. Wonder what kind of lies and bullshit they’re going to throw at this one.

    • @[email protected]
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      332 years ago

      Wonder what kind of lies and bullshit they’re going to throw at this one.

      Bog standard “plug their ears and scream FAKE NEWS” with a dash of “rules for thee, but not for me”.

    • gregorum
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      2 years ago

      Yeah, I’ll just throw it on this pile of other smoking guns we have here.

      • Riskable
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        42 years ago

        Yes but right wing media does not cover these things and even worse: They give their audiences fresh, daily propaganda suggesting that crimes like this are no big deal (unless Democrats do them) and that the opposition will always seem so, so much worse than the worst Republican criminal.

        It’s the argument right wingers always fall back on when they’ve lost an argument or have run out of ways to change the topic: The other side is worst or “just as bad”. No. No they are not and objective reality proves this. There’s so, so many more criminal prosecutions and convictions of Republicans/conservatives in general than there are Democrats/liberals.

        Those on the right will claim the justice department is out to get Republicans yet law enforcement and the justice department itself have vastly more Republicans/conservatives. If there’s a crime to uncover on the Democrat side of things they are actively and wholeheartedly looking for it.

      • themeatbridge
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        2 years ago

        I think everyone is so bumfuzzled because they didn’t hide any of it. It was out in the open, live tweeting acts of treason. Smoking guns are really important when you didn’t watch them load the gun, aim the gun, and shoot the gun. We all saw the entire crime in real time, and it’s weird that justice is taking this long.

        • @[email protected]
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          122 years ago

          The more significant the accused is, in terms of the survival of our democracy, the more ironclad and formality-adhering the prosecution must be.

          The wheels of justice turn slowly, and these cases are moving forward at a pretty solid clip. It’s not uncommon for a murder trial to take place a year-plus after an indictment, as an example.

          This will be analyzed much more closely than even a murder trial, so it is important to jump through every possible hoop.

          As for smoking guns, this evidence is a fucking Napoleonic battlefield of smoking guns.

          • @[email protected]
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            72 years ago

            I hear this a lot, but the longer these things take the more likely it is that the government will shift and simply decide “well, the cases haven’t gone anywhere so at the beheadst of the Republican president we’re shutting it down.”

            It’s good to be thorough, but being so thorough that a conclusion to the charges isn’t on the timescale of Trump’s political career (or even life tbh) makes the whole process a waste of time and money. There needs to be more initiative being taken or the whole process may be moot.

        • @[email protected]
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          192 years ago

          But the president has immunity.

          The idea that a president is above the law is insane. Also ignorance of the law is not a get out of jail free card.

        • @[email protected]
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          62 years ago

          And then they use the fact that they didn’t hide any of it as evidence that it couldn’t have been illegal.