CNN
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Seven battleground states will send fake electors and others who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election as state party delegates to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to formally nominate Donald Trump as their presidential candidate.
Among the fake electors and election deniers identified by CNN are several who are currently facing criminal charges for aiding Trump in his efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. They hail from Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico and Wisconsin, states that were at the heart of the conspiracies in the last presidential election, according to lists released by state parties and other documents obtained by CNN.
They will be elected as national committee members, delegates or alternates with only one task: to formalize President Trump’s nominations.
Their role underscores how effectively Trump has woven election denialism into the Republican platform — and marks a 180-degree turn for a Republican party that, at least in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, sought to distance itself from Trump and his efforts to remain in power.
“Denial of the election is now kind of the price of entry,” said Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman and CNN contributor who served on the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and is a supporter of Biden for the 2024 presidential election.
“The people who participated in the fake electoral scheme or had their mug shots taken have now become heroes of the movement and have hijacked the party,” Kinzinger added.
RNC spokeswoman Anna Kelly said Republican activists are responsible for selecting their convention delegates. “State delegations are made up of delegates who are selected by their peers at the state party level,” Kelly said.
Arizona’s delegation includes three bogus electors who have been indicted in the state for their alleged involvement in the conspiracy, including state Sen. Jake Hoffman, who was recently elected to the Republican National Committee. Hoffman has pleaded not guilty.
In Georgia, Amy Kremer, who helped organize the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse prior to the attack on the Capitol but has not been charged with any criminal wrongdoing, was elected to the Republican National Committee.
AP
Jake Hoffman and Amy Kremer
Michigan’s delegation includes four people facing criminal charges from state prosecutors. The group also includes Meshawn Maddock, a former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party and a false elector, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Also attending the convention is Matthew DePerno, the unsuccessful Michigan attorney general who recently announced his candidacy for the state Supreme Court. He also faces criminal charges for conspiring to access and seize voting machines. He denies any wrongdoing.
“They’ve gone from being fringe elements of the party to now being full, powerful members of the party,” Kinzinger said of the delegates who joined the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The Democratic National Committee also slammed the slate of candidates heading to Milwaukee.
“This kind of far-right MAGA extremism on full display in the Republican Party today is exactly why voters will reject Trump in November,” said Alex Floyd, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee.
About 5,000 delegates and alternates from all 50 states and six territories are expected to descend on Wisconsin for the four-day Republican convention, which begins in Milwaukee on July 15. They will don flashy hats and converge on the convention grounds to pledge their support for Trump.
The convention comes just months after Trump effectively remade the Republican National Committee in his own image. Committee members selected Trump ally Michael Whatley as party chairman, with his daughter-in-law Lara Trump as co-chair. Other senior Trump campaign advisers also hold RNC roles on the side from the campaign.
Carlos Osorio/AP
Republican National Committee co-chairs Michael Whatley and Lara Trump address the media at the Oakland County Republican Party Headquarters, Friday, June 14, 2024, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
For the Republican National Convention’s newly elected members, the convention is a chance to bond and be informed of their new roles. Their four-year terms officially begin at the convention’s conclusion, and they will assume responsibility for potentially shaping the party’s future spending, fundraising, primary debates and the next nominating convention.
“For a lot of people, this is a tremendous honor. You’re head of the presidential nominating committee and you’re taking an important step in our democracy and in the history of our country,” said Douglas Hay, a Republican political strategist and former communications director for the Republican National Committee.
This year, those positions will be held by Republicans who all but undermined our democratic process in 2020.
“At the first convention I went to, a big part of the Republican message was that character matters,” Hay said. “We don’t really talk about that anymore, and this is a reflection of that.”
Prosecutors in five of the seven battleground states in the last presidential election have charged dozens of Republicans who served as alternate electors, as well as allies of Trump, with orchestrating a plot to overturn the election results.
But most of the litigation is moving slowly. In Nevada, a judge recently dismissed criminal charges against Republican electors because of issues with where the lawsuit was filed. As of now, none of the four remaining state-level criminal cases are likely to be resolved before the 2024 election.
The slow progress in the criminal cases has allowed those who sought to overturn the last presidential election to continue to freely participate in the political process, encouraged by Republican activists who subscribe to their baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged against President Trump.
In Nevada, long before the charges were dropped, Republicans had selected five of the six fake 2020 electors to attend the Republican National Convention.
New Mexico included only one Republican replacement elector in its state convention delegation who had not been charged with criminal wrongdoing.
Pennsylvania sent three fake electors to Milwaukee to represent the state party. While no Republican electors in Pennsylvania have faced criminal charges, several played an active role in trying to overturn the last presidential election.
That includes Pennsylvania attorney Thomas Carroll, who represented two local county commissioners in a legal battle over voting machine fraud. During the civil case, Carroll and the county were sanctioned by the state Supreme Court for failing to comply with a court order barring access to the machines, but no criminal charges were filed.
Regret and rebellion
To be sure, some state-level Republicans who participated in fake electoral schemes after the 2020 election have since expressed regret for their actions.
In December, 10 fake electors in Wisconsin, as part of a civil lawsuit settlement, denied their attempts to overturn Trump’s 2020 defeat and acknowledged the legitimacy of Biden’s victory. In a rare moment of accountability, they issued a statement acknowledging that a false certificate they signed in December 2020 was “used as part of an attempt to unlawfully overturn” the legitimate election results.
As part of the civil settlement, the Wisconsin Republican Party pledged not to serve as a real elector in 2024 or any election in which Trump is a candidate, and not to act as a false elector in any future elections.
But it doesn’t place any restrictions on what other roles they can play. One of the fake electors, Pam Travis from Wisconsin, will attend the convention as a delegate. Another, Robert Spindell, will serve as an alternate delegate. Neither has been charged with any crime.
As November approaches, many of the 2020 fake electors remain defiant.
“The American people are waking up to the evil weaponization of government in the hands of power-hungry Democrats, which is why they are rallying around the Republican Party, President Trump and the principles of freedom like never before. And my election as Arizona’s Republican National Committeeman is clear evidence that the Republican Party is the party of hard-working Americans, every day,” Hoffman, one of Arizona’s fake electors, said in a statement to CNN.
Hoffman maintains his innocence and has denounced the charges against him, telling CNN in a statement: “I can state unequivocally that I am innocent of any charges. I will vigorously defend myself, and I look forward to the day when the judicial process will prove my innocence of this blatant political persecution.”
Maddock, who has maintained his innocence as one of Michigan’s fake electors, also called the prosecution’s charges against him “politically motivated” and continues to insist that Trump won the 2020 election. He responded to CNN’s request for comment but did not answer questions about his role as a fake elector or what it meant to be selected as a delegate.
USA Today Network/AP
Meshawn Maddock and Matthew DePerno
DePerno, who also faces state charges in Michigan, provided CNN with the following statement: “We should actually look into this, so now is a good time to point out that not only do so-called ‘election deniers’ (what a ridiculous term) continue to engage, but we are here to win.”
In Georgia, Kremer repeated the lie that Trump won the state, which he lost by about 12,000 votes.
“We didn’t tell people to go to the Capitol, but people wanted to do something, so they marched to the Capitol,” Kremer told The Associated Press in April, “and we all know what’s happened since then: the federal government has been used as a weapon against us.”
“I am honored and excited to be part of a new generation of leaders recently elected to the Republican National Committee, and I am honored to represent Georgia on the committee,” Kremer said in a statement to CNN.
“I look forward to working with my colleagues at the Republican National Committee to ensure that our election proceeds safely and that Donald J. Trump is elected president in November,” she added.
