Georgia's Fake Electors Are Not Happy about This Criminal Investigation
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This is your periodic reminder that Fani Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County in Georgia, did not come to play. From Georgia Public Broadcasting:
In a court filing Tuesday, 11 of the fake GOP electors, including party chairman David Shafer, filed a motion seeking to halt future testimony, have the Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis removed from prosecuting them and that any report be held under embargo or seal until after the midterm elections. The Republicans write in their motion that originally the electors were considered witnesses in the ongoing probe of potential crimes committed in the failed effort to overturn the 2020 election, but on June 28 prosecutors notified them that "as our investigation has matured and new evidence has come to light" that they were now targets of the election probe.
Not that this should come as news to actual lawyers, but sometimes investigations evolve this way. In 1989 in Boston, a guy named Charles Stuart told police that an African-American carjacker had shot him and killed his pregnant wife, Carol. By January, it had become plain that Stuart was the killer and not the victim and, as police were closing in on him, Stuart threw himself off a bridge and into the Mystic River. That was a story about how investigations evolve. Grow up, lawyers. Make actual arguments.
The investigation in Fulton County has entangled itself in this fall's election. State Sen. Burt Jones, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, was one of the people who got a target letter on Tuesday and, of course, his dudgeon went into the stratosphere.
State Sen. Burt Jones, the party's nominee for lieutenant governor and also a fake elector, is apparently a target of the investigation as well. Jones has also filed a motion to have Willis disqualified as the prosecutor. A judge has scheduled a hearing on that motion for Thursday. Jones argues that Willis, a Democrat, is pursuing an investigation against him to benefit his opponent, Charlie Bailey, in the midterm election. Willis recently held a fundraiser for Bailey.
Willis wrote in response that Jones was not singled out based on his campaign and that she should not be removed from the investigation. "Each of the sixteen persons who signed the unofficial Elector Certificate ultimately submitted to the National Archives received similar target letter, alerting that person both that his testimony was required by the special purpose grand jury and that he was target of the investigation," Willis wrote.
But here we have arrived at the mellow-harshing moment of this post: I'm still not entirely sure that, except for having been a part of an overall scheme to hijack the 2020 presidential election, there's an actual crime in someone volunteering to be what the defense calls a "nominee elector" and what the prosecutors call a "fake elector." The Constitution and subsequent attempts to clarify the process only have served to muddle the selection of presidential electors further. (In 2000, the Republican-majority Florida House mused openly about sending its own slate of electors no matter how the recounting turned out.)
This latest iteration is also further proof that the Electoral College system is a screwball method of doing anything in a democratic republic. In 2022, it serves no purpose except to carve 18th-century slaveocratic loopholes into 21st-century elections.
During and after the Dec. 14 meeting where the Republicans signed a false certificate claiming to be the "duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President," Shafer argued that they were simply preserving their options if a lawsuit overturned the results. In the court filing, attorneys for the fake electors also claim that their false documents were legally allowed, blamed the courts for not rectifying lawsuits before the Electoral College met and said that states have no jurisdiction to determine which elector slates are "'fake' or valid."
Thanks, Founders.
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