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.

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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        10 months 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.

        • DrPop@lemmy.ml
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          10 months 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.

        • SCB@lemmy.world
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          10 months 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.

          • Anomaline@lemmy.world
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            10 months 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.

        • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

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

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        What smoking guns? There’s so much smoke I can’t see anything through it!

      • Riskable@programming.dev
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        10 months 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.

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      10 months 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@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

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