BONUS: Washington State GOP Declares War On Democracy
Late Thursday, the Arizona Republic reported that the state’s attorney general, Kris Mayes had announced that a grand jury had charged 11 Arizona Republicans and seven top aides to Señor T (Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, Jenna Ellis, Christina Bobb, Boris Epshteyn and Michael Roman) “in a scheme to keep Trump in the White House by falsely certifying he won the state in 2020, though voters in the Grand Canyon State narrowly favored Joe Biden.” The 9-count indictment alleges the slate of Republican fake electors and the Trump aides “engaged in a conspiracy aimed at ‘preventing the lawful transfer of the presidency of the United States, keeping President Donald J. Trump in office against the will of Arizona voters, and depriving Arizona voters of their right to vote and have their votes counted.’... Trump is ‘unindicted coconspirator 1’… The grand jury's decision could levy criminal consequences for an unprecedented plot to subvert the will of Arizona voters, one that has ruptured faith in elections and fueled conspiracies that have taken root in GOP politics in the state. It comes as Mayes has promised to aggressively combat election conspiracies, offering a sharp contrast to her predecessor.
Mayes reflected the gravity of the case in a five-minute video statement released Wednesday.”
Stacey Barchenger reported that “The 11 electors are each charged with nine criminal counts, including conspiracy, fraudulent schemes and artifices, fraudulent schemes and practices, and six counts of forgery. Each is a felony count and a conviction could mean prison time, though Arizona law allows some sentences to be reduced for people with no criminal history. The fake electors in Arizona are:
Tyler Bowyer, an executive with Turning Point USA and a committeeman for the Republican National Committee
Nancy Cottle, who chaired the Arizona Trump electors
State Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek
State Sen. Anthony Kern, R-Glendale
Jim Lamon, former U.S. Senate candidate
Robert Montgomery, former chair of the Cochise County Republican Committee
Samuel Moorhead, a former leader of the Gila County Republican Party
Loraine Pellegrino, the secretary of the Arizona Trump electors
Greg Safsten, former executive director of the Arizona Republican Party
Kelli Ward, former chair of the Arizona Republican Party
Michael Ward, her husband and a GOP activist
That makes 4 states to criminally charge fake electors, with similar indictments filed in Michigan, Nevada, and Georgia. Many people are wondering why Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul (D) is shirking his duty by not doing the same. Biden won in Arizona by 10,457 votes (0.30%), in Michigan by 154,188 (2.78%) votes, in Nevada by 33,596 votes (2.39%), in Georgia by 11,779 votes (0.23%) and in Wisconsin by 20,682 votes (0.63%).
Writing for the Washington Post, Yvonne Sanchez reported that “Unlike probes by state prosecutors in Michigan and Nevada, Mayes took a top-to-bottom approach with her investigation. Similar to prosecutors in the Atlanta area, Mayes targeted not just local conservatives who carried out the plan in Phoenix, but also the out-of-state middlemen in Trump’s orbit who allegedly helped put it together. But unlike in Georgia, Mayes did not try to indict the former president. This is a second round of charges for Meadows, Giuliani, Ellis, Eastman and Roman, who were all indicted alongside Trump in Georgia last year. Ellis pleaded guilty in October to illegally conspiring to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia and has been cooperating with prosecutors. This is the first time Epshteyn— now a top 2024 campaign aide who frequently talks with the former president— has been charged for his alleged actions after the 2020 election. Same for Bobb, a former One America News correspondent who has espoused false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and last month was named the senior counsel for election integrity at the Republican National Committee.”
Mayes’s case had been squarely focused on local conservatives up until late last year. Then, Arizona prosecutors and investigators met in December with Kenneth Cheseboro, an attorney and an architect of the elector strategy who pleaded guilt in Georgia in October to a single felony count of participating in a conspiracy to file false documents. Chesebro provided Mayes’s team with records— some that had been previously unseen— that revealed more information about those involved in the Arizona effort, according to two people familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about the sensitive conversations. After that, they said the Arizona investigation widened.
…Conversations among attorneys and Trump allies about using GOP electors to change the electoral outcome began as early as Nov. 4, 2020, the indictment said. Eastman, a pro-Trump lawyer, helped devise the multistate strategy and outlined how it could be achieved. By Dec. 12, documents for seven states had been drafted.
By the time the strategy reached Republicans in Arizona, according to the timeline in the indictment, Republicans in the state had worked to try to undermine confidence in the state’s electoral outcome.
By then, Giuliani and Ellis frequently traveled together as they worked to overturn Trump’s loss, state by state. Both attended a Nov. 30, 2020, event in downtown Phoenix attended by state GOP state and federal lawmakers, where they falsely claimed widespread fraud had marred the election. Then, Giuliani, Ellis and other Trump allies tried to persuade Bowers (R) to help overturn the results.
Bowers, speaking in 2022 before the House committee, said he remembered Giuliani saying during that meeting, “We’ve got lots of theories— we just don’t have the evidence.”
Bobb, who has ties to Arizona, communicated with Trump allies about the strategy. After the House speaker met with Giuliani and other Trump allies, Bobb emailed the then-state Senate president with information that Giuliani believed could be used to sow doubt about the 2020 outcome.
Roman, the campaign staffer who oversaw Election Day operations, circulated emails about the alternate elector plan, tracked elector participation in several states and communicated about making sure the paperwork was in Washington by Jan. 6, 2021, when Congress convened to count electoral college votes. Roman directed Chesebro to make sure that Ward, the state party chair, had the necessary paperwork to prepare for the signing of official-looking paperwork, according to emails that have been made public.
…The indictment said that the pro-Trump electors “made statements directly contradicting any intention that their votes would only be used if they succeeded in legal challenge that changed the outcome of Arizona’s election.” The indictment included an image of a social media post from Ward that prosecutors said demonstrates that “her goal was to have the Arizona Legislature certify the fake Republican electors’ votes.”
Washington state was not even close. Biden thumped Trump there 2,369,612 (57.97%) to 1,484,651 (38.77%) and the GOP controls none of teh levers of power that would have allowed them to participate in the election-theft scheme. Two of the three Republican members of the state’s congressional delegation, Dan Newhouse and Jaime Herrera Beutler, voted to impeach Trump. All this has frustrated Washington MAGAts, who have lost their minds. Yesterday, the Seattle Times reported that the state GOP has thrown in the towel on democracy itself, endorsing the most extreme and unelectable MAGA candidates, against establishment Republicans who can compete credibly in general elections.
Danny Westneat wrote that Dave Reichert, a former congressman and sheriff and the GOP front-runner for governor was left out in the cold at the party convention. “‘The party’s been taken hostage,’ he told the Spokesman-Review. But there was another strain to the proceedings last weekend that didn’t get much attention. Political conventions are often colorful curiosities; this one took a darker turn. The Republican base, it turns out, is now opposed to democracy… After the candidates left, the convention’s delegates got down to crafting a party platform. Like at most GOP gatherings in the Donald Trump era, this one called for restrictions on voting. In Washington state, the delegates called for the end of all mail-in voting. Instead, we would have a one-day-only, in-person election, with photo ID and paper ballots, with no use of tabulating machines or digital scanners to count the ballots. All ballots would be counted by hand… But then the convention veered into more unexpected anti-democratic territory. A resolution called for ending the ability to vote for U.S. senators. Instead, senators would get appointed by state legislatures, as it generally worked 110 years ago prior to the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913. ‘We are devolving into a democracy, because congressmen and senators are elected by the same pool,’ was how one GOP delegate put it to the convention. ‘We do not want to be a democracy.’”
Then they kicked it up a notch. They passed a resolution calling on people to please stop using the word “democracy.”
“We encourage Republicans to substitute the words ‘republic’ and ‘republicanism’ where previously they have used the word ‘democracy,’ ” the resolution says. “Every time the word ‘democracy’ is used favorably it serves to promote the principles of the Democratic Party, the principles of which we ardently oppose.”
The resolution sums up: “We… oppose legislation which makes our nation more democratic in nature.”
…Not everyone at the convention agreed with those sentiments, though they were strongly outvoted. Some of the delegates seemed to have contempt for voting and voters— at least when they come out on the losing end of it.
“The same people who select the baboons in Olympia are the ones selecting your senators,” said one delegate in remarks to the convention hall.
A party platform is a statement of principles; it has little to no chance of being implemented. So it’s tempting to ignore it. Or wish it away, as Reichert is trying to do, by suggesting the real party is out there somewhere having been abducted by impostors.
When people say “democracy itself is on the ballot” in this election, though, I think this is what they’re talking about.
For years now, since Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, some Republicans have been on the defensive about charges they’re flirting with anti-democratic impulses or authoritarianism.
A while back, this newspaper ran an Op-Ed from a leading conservative, the editor of the National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru. He argued that despite Trump’s attempts to block the transfer of power, and the party largely backing him up on that, the whole thing has been blown out of proportion. It’s become a myth that Democrats hold about Republicans, he suggested. It’s similar, he argued, to the misconceptions Republicans have that Democrats are committing mass election fraud.
“Republicans aren’t against democracy,” was the headline of that Op-Ed.
Well a few years have passed, and now they’re putting it in writing.