Page:Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.pdf/378

 When Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Andrew Hitt was notified in late November that "the campaign wants to [sic] list of electors," he texted his executive director that "I am def concerned about their inquiry" and that "I hope they are not planning on asking us to do anything like try and say we are only the proper electors." On December 12th, after Hitt received a message about a phone call with Giuliani to discuss the fake elector issue, he texted a colleague: "These guys are up to no good and its [sic] gonna fail miserably." Despite such concerns, Hitt and many other fake electors participated anyway.

Even so, 14 of the original Republicans who had been listed as electoral college nominees on the November ballot bowed out when the fake Trump electors gathered in December. Former Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land declined to attend, which the State's GOP chair, Laura Cox, told the Select Committee was because "I think she just said she was uncomfortable with the whole thing" and that she "has her own beliefs." A senior advisor for the Pennsylvania GOP said that Chairman Tabas "did not serve as an elector because Joe Biden won the election and it was Biden's electors that were certified." Former U.S. Representative Tom Marino (R-PA) said he backed out because "I'm a constitutionalist," and "as a former prosecutor, when the attorney general says that he's not finding anything there, that's good enough for me." The other eleven dropouts included a Georgia State lawmaker, a former State party chair from New Mexico, two former State party chairs from Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania's RNC national committeewoman.

Other participants asserted that they would have had much greater concerns if the Trump team had been more forthcoming about how the fake electoral votes would be used. The Trump Campaign's director of election day operations in Georgia told the Select Committee that "I absolutely would not have" wanted to participate in organizing the Trump team's fake electors in Georgia "had I known that the three main lawyers for the campaign that I'd spoken to in the past and were leading up were not on board." He said he felt "angry" because "no one really cared if—if people were potentially putting themselves in jeopardy" by doing this, and "we were just . . . useful idiots or rubes at that point."

On December 14th, using instructions provided by Chesebro, the fake Trump electors gathered and participated in signing ceremonies in all seven States. In five of these States—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin—the certificates they signed used the language that falsely