As former President Donald Trump prepares for a visit to Arizona, there has been renewed scrutiny of f**e e*******l v**e certificates sent by Trump supporters in the aftermath of the 2020 e******n.
Trump was originally set to hold a press conference on the first anniversary of the J*** 6 Capitol i**********n, but said he would instead address the e******n and the r**t at the Jan. 15 rally in Florence, Ariz. Trump has continued to baselessly claim that the 2020 e******n was s****n from him, with some prominent Arizona Republicans pushing the same conspiracy theory.
While Republican Gov. Doug Ducey certified the e******n with Joe Biden as its winner in December 2020, other members of the party, including Kelli Ward, chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, pushed a f**e e*******l certificate stating that Trump had won the state. The document was sent to the National Archives, which processes E*******l College certificates before sending them on to Congress.
The Arizona GOP’s official social media accounts promoted its false document and those of other states with a tweeted video captioned “The signing” on Dec. 14 and a YouTube video posted the following day in which Ward said that the “true e*****rs for the presidency” had met the previous day to cast their v**es.
“Congress is adjourned,” Ward tweeted a few weeks later as pro-Trump r****rs stormed the U.S. Capitol on J*** 6 in an attempt to block certification of the e******n. “Send the e*****r choice back to the legislatures.”
In addition to Arizona, f**e e*******l certificates were sent by Trump supporters in Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The certificates were published by the watchdog group American Oversight last March, and began circulating again this week after reporting from MSNBC and Politico, as the House committee looking into the events of J*** 6 continues its investigation into how much state-level efforts to subvert the e******n were coordinated.
One of the 11 Republicans who signed the Arizona document was Jake Hoffman, who had just won a state legislature race. While Hoffman was running for the seat in 2020, he was banned from Twitter and the marketing firm he ran was banned from Facebook for participating in what was referred to as a pro-Trump “troll farm” where teenagers posted in favor of Trump and promoted conspiracy theories about the e******n and the c****av***s. The effort was reportedly affiliated with Turning Point USA, a major conservative youth organization based in Arizona.
With the documents receiving renewed scrutiny this week, Arizona NBC affiliate KPNX asked Hoffman about signing Arizona’s on Wednesday.
“So in unprecedented times, unprecedented action is ... there is no case law, there is no precedent that exists as to whether or not an e******n that is currently being litigated in the courts has due standing,” Hoffman said. “Which is why we felt it appropriate to provide Congress and the vice president with dueling opinions.”
A second group, identifying itself as “The Sovereign Citizens of the Great State of Arizona,” also sent a slate of f**e e*******l v**es to the National Archives, prompting a cease-and-desist letter from the office of Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs for its use of the official Arizona seal.
Arizona has been ground zero for e******n-related conspiracies, with a partisan “audit” of the v**e in populous Maricopa County dividing Republicans in the state. At an October hearing in the U.S. House on the much-maligned Maricopa b****t inquiry, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., refused to say Biden won the e******n.
The belief that Biden is not a l********e p*******t is now mainstream among most Republicans, as a Yahoo News/YouGov poll released last week found that a vast majority of Trump v**ers (75 percent) falsely believe the e******n was “r****d and stolen,” while just 9 percent of them think Biden “won fair and square” — down from 13 percent last January.
Trump has endorsed candidates for the state’s top offices that have said the 2020 e******n wasn’t legitimate, including former television journalist Kari Lake for governor, who has said she wouldn’t have certified the 2020 e******n results. He has also thrown his support behind state legislator Mark Finchem — who attended the J*** 6 rally at the Capitol — for Arizona secretary of state. Finchem has consistently pushed the notion that the e******n was s****n from Trump while supporting the Maricopa “audit.”
“The Maricopa County 2020 e******n cannot be allowed to stand. It must be decertified and set aside,” Finchem said at a Trump rally in Iowa in October.
Ward, Lake, Finchem and Biggs are all set to speak at Trump’s rally on Saturday.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/f**e-e*******l-documents-under-new-scrutiny-as-trump-prepares-for-arizona-visit-180154595.html