Page:Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.pdf/368

 advisors wanted Vice President Pence to disregard real electoral college votes for former Vice President Biden, in favor of these fake competing electoral slates.

But there never were real, competing slates of electors. By the time the fake Trump electors met on December 14th, appropriate government officials in each of the seven States had already certified their State's official election results for former Vice President Biden. No court had issued an order reversing or calling into question those results, and most election-related litigation was over. And as detailed in Chapter 2, despite the illicit efforts of President Trump and his allies, no State legislature had agreed to the President's request to reverse the result of the election by appointing a different slate of electors.

Given all of this, these groups of Trump backers who called themselves Presidential electors were never actually electors, and the votes they purported to cast on December 14th were not valid. They were fake. They had no legal standing, and their fake votes could not have been used by Vice President Pence to disregard the real votes of electors chosen by the voters.

By January 6th, President Trump had been discouraged by his top lawyers from following through on this plan. The Trump Campaign's senior staff attorneys had concerns, and several days before the joint session, the Acting Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General blocked the sending of a letter indicating that there were "competing slates" of electors, including "in Georgia and several other States." But this reasoning did nothing to change President Trump's rhetoric or plan. He continued to assert that there were "competing" or "dual" slates of electors to create an opportunity to stay in office on January 6th.

These lawyers were right: President Trump's plan was illegal. In his June 7, 2022, opinion, Federal District Judge David Carter wrote that this initiative to "certify alternate slates of electors for President Trump" constituted a "critical objective of the January 6 plan." This followed Judge Carter's earlier determination in March that "[t]he illegality of the plan was obvious," and "[e]very American—and certainly the President of the United States—knows that in a democracy, leaders are elected, not installed. With a plan this 'BOLD,' President Trump knowingly tried to subvert this fundamental principle. Based on the evidence the Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021."

The fake elector effort was an unlawful, unprecedented and destructive break from the electoral college process that our country has used to select