The White House intended to replace Biden’s delegates with their own in order to object to the official results and refuse to formalize the replacement in the US presidency
Donald Trump pressured personally and also through his allies dozens of state officials in the seven North American states in which he lost in the presidential elections on November 3, 2020. Even from the White House itself, then led by the controversial New York tycoon , an illegal plot of false delegates was promoted to replace those of his Democratic opponent to force the annulment of the electoral results.
The special commission of the US Congress that investigates everything that happened around the brutal assault on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021 by supporters of the former Republican president showed in its session on Tuesday abundant evidence of the extensive dirty campaign that was carried out. carried out, in coordination with the White House, to coerce, intimidate, and force numerous local and state officials to cooperate with his corrupt plot.
Officials at all levels of the US administrations received up to 4,000 text messages, on their mobile phones and even those of their relatives, urging them to alter the result of the polls that was unfavorable to Trump. Other messages were intimidating and contained violent threats, including death. In turn, on the street, the campaign of intimidation intensified through aggressive protests in the workplaces and also the private homes of those officials, including electoral workers, who were in the crosshairs of the plotters of this apparent attempt. ‘coup’.
In parallel, Trump and his main advisers, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows, launched the so-called “false commissioners” plan to replace the legitimate authorized ones drawn from the polls, who gave victory to Joe Biden. According to what they were plotting, these ‘alternative’ lists of voters would be presented as “contested certifications” in the States that were in question in the face of the certification of the electoral results that Congress should make that January 6. These false certifications could have served the then Vice President, Mike Pence, as an excuse to declare such official results as objectionable and, consequently, refuse to formalize Biden’s victory, as his boss intended and as he urged him several times.
Giuliani’s role
Simultaneously, numerous public officials related to said electoral process – whose testimonies were presented on video during the hearing – were harshly coerced into accepting the illegitimate lists of Republican delegates, willing to appoint Trump as president. To add more confusion, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, the former politician Rudolph Giuliani and his group, presented legal resources on alleged electoral fraud with inconceivable theories to contest the results in the States that were still in question.
In one of the videos the committee released, testimony is heard from a Georgia poll worker, Shaye Moss, who was falsely accused by Giuliani of sneaking “suitcases” of votes favorable to Biden, a conspiracy debunked by election officials themselves. Moss and her mother, also a civil servant, received racist threats and intense intimidation on their lives and that of their families, with traumatic consequences that still linger two years later.
Despite being rejected on December 14, 2020 in the certifications of the electoral colleges of each State, the Trump supporters continued with the plot. To do this, they signed false electoral certificates, and declared themselves “duly elected and authorized.” The commission showed on Tuesday several pieces of evidence of the fabricated “false electoral documents”, corresponding to the states that Trump lost -Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada and Wisconsin- and that should be sent to Washington.
The plan was to send the documents to Vice President Pence and also to the National Archives. Congressional investigators showed different text messages revealing Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson’s attempt to get fake election documents to number two in the White House. An aide to Pence ultimately prevented the documents from reaching him. The rest is history. The vice president, whose role in the electoral certification is merely ceremonial, refused to bow to the corrupt plot of Trump and his allies.
Threats to a Secretary of State
The Commission also examined Trump’s pressure campaign on top officials in the states he had lost, such as Arizona and Georgia. Two exceptional witnesses testified in person about it before Congress: Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger and his deputy Gabriel Sterling, both under intense pressure from Trump personally.
Both are Republicans and spoke of the strict review of the legitimacy of the election results. They also did it from Trump’s already famous coercion call on January 2, 2021, in front of witnesses, urging Raffesnsberger to find 11,780 exact votes, precisely those necessary to overcome Biden’s margin of victory. But when he refused, the Georgia secretary of state received serious threats, including degrading sexual comments against his wife. In addition, the house of his son’s widow, with small children, was broken into.
In the weeks that followed, Sterling strongly denounced Trump’s campaign of lies about election theft in Georgia in a press conference that went viral, and called on him to recant in order to stop the violence he had unleashed. For their part, the members of Trump’s legal team, who do not deny the existence and preparation of the aforementioned illegitimate false lists, branded the version of the plot presented by the Commission as “distorted.”
According to his version, these alternative lists were put together and signed in the event that the States reviewed their official electoral certification and opted for a favorable one for Trump, after which they would be immediately sent to Congress. An explanation that conflicts with evidence obtained by the Commission that John Eastman, architect of the false certifications scheme, admitted on December 19, 2020, that Trump’s lists were “dead on arrival” if they were not certified. And despite this, Eastman continued to pressure Pence to reject Biden’s lists.
Most citizens want to see Trump impeached
The historic hearings of this special congressional commission are having an impact on American public opinion. And it seems that most citizens want Donald Trump to be impeached for inciting those tragic riots on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021.
This is revealed by a survey published this week jointly by the ABC News network and the newspaper ‘The Washington Post’. According to their results, six out of ten US citizens, 58%, want to see Trump prosecuted with criminal charges. They are six points more than those who had the same opinion at the end of April.
Even so, Republican voters remain unmoved on Trump. And it is that according to that same survey, only 19% of them would be in favor of impeaching the former president, compared to 91% of the Democrats who would want it.
In any case, the popular consultation carried out by the two media referred to affects the deep ideological fracture that divides the country at this time.
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