Lessons learned from fake electors
Fake electors, real questions … Fraud abound … And Beuller … Beuller … Bueller.
If you’re anything like us, you’ve got a lot of looming questions about last week’s announcement that Arizona’s 2020 fake electors and friends have been indicted on multiple felony counts.
Like, will anyone ever see the inside of a prison cell?
The indictments are a big deal and you’re going to be hearing a lot about them throughout the election season, as Donald Trump again seeks the presidency, several of Arizona’s fake electors run for higher office and Democrats make the case that Republicans can’t be trusted with safeguarding democracy.
But if your first question is, “Wait, what are fake electors?” — don’t worry, we’ll start at the top.
What are fake electors?
Because the president is elected based on the results of the Electoral College, rather than the popular vote, you’re actually voting for 11 presidential electors — not the presidential candidates themselves — when you cast your vote for president.
But only the slate of electors representing the candidate who got the most votes in Arizona get to cast their votes at the Electoral College.
That’s where this whole problem started.
In 2020, Trump’s electors decided to ignore the will of the people and tell the electoral college that Arizona actually supported Trump instead of President Joe Biden. Seven states, including Arizona, sent a dueling set of fake electors to Congress after the 2020 election, and Arizona’s slate of fake electors is the fourth to be charged with a crime.
The fake electors scheme is part of what gave steam to the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, as protesters cited Arizona and other states as one of the reasons to stop Congress from certifying the results of the Electoral College.
Weren’t there two groups of fake electors?
There were. The ones that Attorney General Kris Mayes announced charges against last week were the real fake electors. Meaning they were the actual Trump electors who were listed on the ballot.
There was also a second group of “sovereign citizens” who claimed to be Arizona’s real Trump electors and also claimed Trump won the 2020 election in Arizona, though nobody seems too concerned about prosecuting them.
The real fake electors who were indicted include Sens. Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern, former AZGOP Chair Kelli Ward and her husband Michael Ward, former AZGOP executive director Greg Safsten, 2022 GOP U.S. Senate contender Jim Lamon, Turning Point USA executive director Tyler Bowyer and current and former party officials, Nancy Cottle, Robert Montgomery, Lorraine Pellegrino and Samuel Moorhead.
Besides the 11 fake electors, who else was charged?
A handful of their enablers — including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, campaign aides Boris Epshteyn and Mike Roman, attorneys Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman. Jenna Ellis and Christina Bobb.
Bobb was an ASU graduate, a “reporter” for OAN and the main cheerleader for the Cyber Ninjas audit of the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County. She recently took a gig leading the Republican National Committee’s election integrity team, which as the Washington Post notes, provides “a certain irony” considering the charges against her.
Former lawmakers Kelly Townsend and Mark Finchem, who is running for the state Senate this year after failing to win the Secretary of State’s Office two years ago, were named alongside Trump as unindicted co-conspirators.
So should we expect the two lawmakers who are facing felonies to resign?
Usually, when politicians face felony charges, they resign. But in this case, don’t hold your breath.
Hoffman will likely skate to an easy reelection, considering he faces no Republican challengers in his deep-red district. Kern is campaigning for Congress, using the indictment as a pitch to voters in the Republican-leaning Congressional District 8. He, too, plans to hold onto his position in the Legislature until the end of the year.
And it doesn’t appear GOP leadership at the Capitol has any appetite to censure them or strip them of their committee assignments, as they did with Republican Rep. Matt Gress after he voted to repeal the state’s territorial-era abortion ban last week.
Will anyone go to prison for this?
That’s the biggest question. The answer will depend on a variety of factors.
As the Republic’s Ray Stern notes, one of those big factors will be their mental state and the question of whether they knew at the time that they were committing a crime.
The defendants are charged with crimes ranging from conspiracy to fraud, which all carry potential prison time.
But another key factor will be if the state can stack the charges.
For a first-time, white-collar felony, the likelihood of prison is low. But if the state can charge the crimes sequentially, then by the second charge, it’s no longer a first-time felony
Each offense individually is eligible for probation, lawyers told us, so to get mandatory prison time, the state must prove that the offenses were committed on different dates. That would make any offenses “subsequent” to the first prison-mandatory.
“Getting more than a two-year sentence in a white-collar case is pretty significant,” lawyer and former federal prosecutor Mark Kokanovich told us. “You see that happen, though, when people have done things that are really egregious, or when they go to trial, and take the stand and don't accept responsibility? ... And prosecutors consider, is this person a risk to reoffend? And has this person learned their lesson?”
Will the charges stop this year’s electors from trying the same thing?
That’s certainly the hope of newspaper editorials everywhere. But we’re not so certain.
State law gives the authority to decide the party’s electors to the party chairs, and the Arizona Republican Party infrastructure is in the grips of election derangement syndrome, rallying around the accused felons.
At Saturday’s AZGOP convention, state party activists elected Hoffman as one of their national committeemen, alongside expelled former lawmaker Liz Harris, Stern notes. And Kern declared the indictment to be a “badge of honor”, saying he’s being persecuted, just like Trump.
This is clearly not a group of people who have learned their lessons.
Fontes finds fraud: The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office referred 13 cases of potential signature fraud to the attorney general based on evidence that emerged after candidates had their nomination petition signatures challenged in court, the Arizona Mirror’s Caitlin Sievers reports. Most notable among the referrals are allegations that Republican Rep. Austin Smith forged more than 100 voter signatures. Smith dropped out of the race and resigned from his job at Turning Point Action after his signatures were challenged, and it’s up to the AG to determine whether to file charges.
Friends in high places: Sen. Wendy Rogers asked the Arizona Board of Technical Registration to stop investigating her husband, Hal Kunnen, over a complaint he failed to accurately report conditions at a home inspection, per Arizona Capitol Times’ Jakob Thorington. Sen. Justine Wadsack also got involved and represented Kunnen in the review of his case, and even introduced legislation to limit occupational associations’ disciplinary authority. Rogers justified her intervention as a concern for one of her constituents.
“There are situations when there’s legislative branch oversight with executive branch actions when it’s not your own constituent and it’s a policy issue, but the direct link with Rogers’ husband is what makes this different from what would be a normal oversight role,” said Will Humble, the executive director for the Arizona Public Health Association.
We were unafraid: Republicans filed ethics complaints against Democratic state Reps. Analise Ortiz and Oscar De Los Santos, accusing them of an “attempted insurrection” several weeks ago when they yelled “shame” at Republican Rep. Matt Gress after he stood alone within his caucus in trying to repeal the state’s territorial-era ban on abortion, the Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl reports. Republican Reps. Barbara and Jacqueline Parker and David Marshall filed the complaint, claiming there was a “riot” on the floor and lawmakers “feared for their safety.”
Throw out more bums: Former University of Florida provost Joseph Glover will be the University of Arizona’s new provost despite faculty dissent, the Daily Star’s Ellie Wolfe reports. More than 100 UA staff members sent a letter condemning Glover’s hire and said he’s too focused on rankings and that “his time with department heads was off-putting.” Faculty members expressed support instead for Marie Hardin, the dean of the College of Communications at Pennsylvania State University, but UA President Robert Robbins is fully behind the hire. Wolfe also writes the university is hosting two listening sessions on May 1 and 8 to get feedback on who should replace Robbins as the next president.
Speaking of protests: Arizona State University arrested three pro-Palestinian protesters Friday and another 69 Saturday as campus protests across the nation heat up, the New York Times reported.
52 vetoes, 179 signatures: Gov. Katie Hobbs finished another round of vetos, this time on legislation that would require transgender students to use showers corresponding with their biological sex, make it easier for property owners to kick out squatters and increase penalties for people convicted of organized retail theft three or more times, Axios’ Jeremy Duda writes. The governor also signed 12 bills into law, including one to allow off-duty police officers to put red and blue lights on their cars for private traffic control gigs and another permitting campaign signs to go up 71 days before an election instead of 45.
Going to prison: Former Democratic state Sen. Tony Navarrete was sentenced to one year in prison after being convicted for sexually molesting a teenage boy, the Republic’s Ray Stern writes. Navarrete was offered a 60-day sentence with 10 years of probation if he went to counseling, but the former lawmaker turned down the offer because he wouldn’t admit guilt.
Sky Harbor experienced an internet outage Friday that caused delays and ridiculously long lines.
ABC15 tweeted a video of overcrowding at the airport, and like any good broadcast platform, they made sure to credit who they got the video from.
In case you didn’t catch on, Abe Froman is known for more than his video work. He’s also the sausage king of Chicago.
Rogers & Wadsack are a complete waste of time, space, oxygen, and corn flakes. Let's get rid of them. Also, let's see if we can issue Anthony Boy Kern his feedlot papers. I don't recall ever seeing an uglier face on an ugly human being...and I read the comics. Please consider voting BLUE up and down the ballot. It's the only sure-fire way to broom these knuckleheads out of here.
The irony of Kern tweeting about the "Rule of Law" is just....too much.