As the tidal wave of documents piles up and is combed through by the House committee investigating former President Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election, evidence continues to reveal that the corruption and deception took place on local and executive levels.
Tuesday, Arizona Republic reporter Richard Ruelas from 12-News caught up with state Rep. Jake Hoffman, who was one of the Republicans who signed a fake election "certification" alleging he was a GOP elector appointed for Trump's nonexistent win in Arizona.
When Ruelas jumped on Hoffman’s ass about his involvement, demanding he explain his authority, Hoffmann actually had the nerve to say: “In unprecedented times, unprecedented action occurs.”
Adding: “There is no case law … as to when an election that is currently being litigated in the courts has due standing, which is why we felt it appropriate to provide Congress and the Vice President with dueling opinions.”
Grilled by Ruelas about who gave him his orders, Hoffman replied, “I was one of the electors. I’m not in charge of the electors. So you would need to ask the party chair that,” which he repeated several times and then ran off.
Thanks to reporting by Politico, it was discovered Tuesday that the National Archives received fake certificates of ascertainment from Republicans pretending to be electors from Michigan and Arizona. Wisconsin was the first state where the forgery was uncovered.
Now MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has uncovered two more states involved in the forgery scandal—Georgia and Nevada—where Republicans forged official election paperwork, pretending to be actual electors from states where President Joe Biden won but casting their votes for Trump—who as we know, lost.
Hoffman joins Kathy Berden—a Republican national committeewoman from Michigan who also sent a forged GOP elector certificate to the Senate—the U.S. archivist, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office, and the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for Michigan's Western District, The Detroit News reported Monday.
When The Detroit News asked Berden about the fake documents, she said, “I can't comment on anything like that. That was a long time ago.” Not that long ago sister!
It was reported by Newsweek in December that former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows endorsed the idea of alternate electors.
According to the House committee, Meadows sent emails and texts about “alternate electors” to Congress in 2020, allegedly saying “I love it” about the idea to an unidentified member of Congress.
"Mr. Meadows received text messages and emails regarding apparent efforts to encourage Republican legislators in certain States to send alternate slates of electors to Congress, a plan which one Member of Congress acknowledged was 'highly controversial' and to which Mr. Meadows responded, 'I love it,'" the committee report reads.
"Mr. Meadows responded to a similar message by saying '[w]e are' and another such message by saying 'Yes. Have a team on it,'" it said.
According to Politico, after discovering the forgeries, Arizona sent a cease and desist letter to "Sovereign Citizens of the Great State of Arizona,” a pro-Trump group, demanding they stop using the state seal. They referred the matter to the state’s attorney general.
“By affixing the state seal to documents containing false and misleading information about the results of Arizona’s Nov. 3, 2020, General Election, you undermine the confidence in our democratic institutions,” Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs wrote to the group.
Bizarrely enough, Lori Osiecki admitted to The Arizona Republic that she elected to send the "certificate of ascertainment" after a meeting with Rudy Giuliani and attending post-election MAGA rallies.
"We seated before the legislators here. We already turned it in. We beat them to the game," she said.
Here’s my question: How could Trump not have known this was going on?