Federal Prosecutors Probing False Electoral College Submissions in Several States

Vice President Mike Pence reads the final certification of Electoral College votes cast in November's presidential election during a joint session of Congress after working through the night, at the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 7, 2021. J. Scott Applewhite, Pool

Federal prosecutors are probing 2020 Electoral College submissions that they say falsely declared former President Donald Trump the winner of several states he lost.

“Our prosecutors are looking at those, and I can’t say anything more on ongoing investigations,” Lisa Monaco, the Justice Department’s deputy attorney general told CNN.

Attorneys general in Michigan and New Mexico told The Epoch Times that they have referred investigations related to illegitimate Electoral College results to federal prosecutors.

“While review under state law is ongoing, our office has referred this matter to the United States Attorney, Fred J. Federici,” a spokesperson for New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas, a Democrat, told The Epoch Times in an email.

A spokesperson for Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, said in an email, “Our department still has an open investigation and we will continue to cooperate with the federal authorities as we pursue parallel efforts.”

According to nonprofit watchdog group American Oversight, public records requests and disclosures show the submissions were also sent in by Republican Party officials in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Officials in Pennsylvania said a clause inserted into the documents there means “our office does not believe this meets the legal standards for forgery.”

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, told reporters recently that the federal government should investigate the matter.

The Republican parties in the seven states didn’t respond to requests for comment or couldn’t be reached.

The electoral documents from the states were not accepted by Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.

Some Republican members of Congress that day objected to electoral votes from several states where fraud was alleged to have occurred, but the objections were overruled and Joe Biden was certified as the winner of all of them.

Some Republicans have said what they did is being misconstrued, including David Shafer, head of the Georgia Republican Party.

“We were told by the lawyers that if the Republican nominees for the Electoral College did not meet on Dec. 14 and cast their votes, then Trump’s lawsuit would be mooted because there would be no remedy available to him if he prevailed,” he told the Washington Examiner. “So we met to preserve his remedies if he prevailed.”

Shafer said on Twitter at the time that, with Trump’s lawsuit contesting the Georgia election still pending, the group was forced to meet and cast their votes.

If they had not, he wrote, “the president’s pending election contest would have been effectively mooted.”

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.