Page:Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.pdf/380

 On the evening of December 14th, RNC Chairwoman McDaniel provided an update for President Trump on the status of the fake elector effort. She forwarded President Trump's executive assistant an "Elector Recap" email, which conveyed that "President Trump's electors voted" not just in "the states that he won" but also in six "contested states" (specifically, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). Minutes later, President Trump's executive assistant replied: "It's in front of him!"

The Trump team and the fake electors also engaged in acts of subterfuge to carry out their plans on December 14th. For instance, a campaign staffer notified the Georgia participants via email that he "must ask for your complete discretion." He explained that their efforts required "complete secrecy," and told them to arrive at the State capitol building and "please state to the guards that you are attending a meeting with either Senator Brandon Beach or Senator Burt Jones." Indeed, Greg Bluestein of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that he tried to enter this group's meeting room but "[a] guy at the door called it an 'education meeting' and scrambled when I tried to walk in."

Former Michigan GOP Chair Laura Cox told the Select Committee that an attorney who "said he was working with the President's Campaign" informed her that the Michigan slate for President Trump was "planning to meet in the capit[o]l and hide overnight so that they could fulfill the role of casting their vote in, per law, in the Michigan chambers." She said that she "told him in no uncertain terms that that was insane and inappropriate," and that she warned Michigan's senate majority leader as a precaution. Instead, the group of fake electors in Michigan signed their paperwork in the State GOP headquarters, where staff told them not to bring phones inside.

In spite of the Trump Campaign's efforts to give the fake electors' votes the sheen of authenticity, they failed. The U.S. Senate Parliamentarian noted in correspondence by January 3rd that materials from the Trump team's supposed electors in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania had "no seal of the state" and "no evidence votes were delivered by the executive of the state for signature by electors," and, as a result, these materials failed to meet requirements of federal law. Similarly, the Senate Parliamentarian noted that the Trump team's slates from Georgia, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania appeared to violate another statute which requires the approval of the Governor for the substitution of electors.