ATLANTA – It was once a foul position to stay a secret.
When Republicans collected on December 14, 2020, claiming to be legitimate electors casting the state’s 16 electoral votes for Donald Trump, they met at the Georgia Capitol in a room simply upstairs from the construction’s public front. A Trump marketing campaign respectable requested for the electors’ “complete discretion,” telling them to say simplest that they had been meeting with two state senators who had been there.
“Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result — a win in Georgia for President Trump — but will be hampered unless we have complete secrecy and discretion,” Robert Sinners wrote in an email uncovered by investigators.
But reporters for The Associated Press and other news organizations noticed the Republicans entering the building and were eventually admitted into the room, where they photographed and recorded video of the proceeding. In the chaotic weeks after the 2020 election, the gathering’s significance wasn’t immediately clear. But it has emerged as a critical element to the prosecution of Trump and 18 others who were indicted by a Georgia grand jury in August for efforts to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow win in the state.
The meeting was cited as a central element in court proceedings Friday as part of a last-minute deal with attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who pleaded guilty to one felony charge of conspiracy to commit filing false documents.
Chesebro, who prosecutors have said helped originate the plan for Republican electors to meet in states where Biden was certified as the winner, is now one of three people who have pleaded guilty in the case. Attorney Sidney Powell pleaded guilty Thursday to six misdemeanors accusing her of intentionally interfering with the performance of election duties as part of a broader conspiracy prosecutors say violated Georgia’s anti-racketeering law.
While Democrats met in the ornate state Senate chamber to cast electoral votes for Biden, the Republicans sat around three worn and nicked wooden conference tables to consider options for keeping Trump in the White House. In the language of the case laid out by prosecutors, these were “fake” or “false” or “fraudulent” electors. At least 8 Georgia Republican electors provide that day have agreed to testify in alternate for immunity from state fees.
The meeting was once led by way of David Shafer, then chairman of the Georgia Republican Party. Lending it the air of an respectable continuing, a court docket reporter was once provide, one thing Shafer denied all the way through wondering by way of Fulton County prosecutors in April 2022. That denial contributed to a rate of false statements and writings towards Shafer.
More improvised parts of the meeting turned into transparent as the team thought to be its officials. Shawn Still, who is now a state senator, wasn’t to start with elected as secretary, as an example. But midway thru the meeting, Shafer famous that Still’s identify was once published as the secretary on paperwork.
“I would like to avoid reprinting the documents,” Shafer mentioned, asking the electors to substitute any other Republican with Still.
One of simplest 3 other people the grand jury indicted for collaborating in the vote, Still can have been dragged into criminal jeopardy when he was once elected secretary. The 3rd indicted elector, Cathy Latham, was once additionally charged for serving to outsiders access state voting equipment in south Georgia’s Coffee County.
As the meeting opened up, the Republicans sought to substitute 4 electors who had been in the past covered up to enhance Trump. One had registered to vote in Alabama and was once now not eligible. State Sen. Burt Jones, later elected lieutenant governor with Trump’s backing, took his spot.
Three different electors didn’t display up, together with John Isakson Jr., son of overdue Republican U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson. Isakson instructed The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2022 that he stayed away as a result of the meeting gave the look of “political gamesmanship.”
Prosecutors allege Shafer and Still dedicated but extra felonies by way of making a report claiming to fill the ones vacancies. State regulation says that motion wanted Gov. Brian Kemp’s consent. The Republican governor had days previous qualified Biden as Georgia’s winner for a 2d time after a recount.
Sinners, the Trump respectable, published new elector certificate on a loud transportable printer. The racket of the gadget gave the meeting an earthly, bureaucratic really feel in an unadorned area in most cases put aside for state lawmakers to host constituents.
One by way of one, the 16 Republicans had been referred to as. Each rose and walked to the desk, signing certificate announcing Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence as the most well-liked selection of Georgia citizens. That’s the second, grand jurors allege, after they dedicated the felonies for which they’ve been charged: impersonating a public officer, first level forgery and making false statements in writing.
“They were fake electors; they were impersonating electors. They were no electors,” Fulton County prosecutor Anna Cross told a federal judge in September, adding there was no evidence that Shafer, Still, Latham or other Republicans believed Trump had actually won.
Their defenders call them “alternate” or “contingent” electors, announcing they had been simply making an attempt to stay Trump’s criminal choices open as a lawsuit challenged Georgia’s election effects. Some Republicans argue Trump by no means were given a good shake in Georgia as a result of that lawsuit was never tried, in spite of a state regulation calling for election demanding situations to be heard inside 20 days. A Georgia Republican Party website raising money to defend electors calls them “patriots who served.”
“If we did not hold this meeting, then our election contest would effectively be abandoned,” Shafer mentioned all the way through the December meeting, speaking to lawyer Ray Smith, who was once there advising the electors and was once additionally indicted. “And so the only way for us to have any judge consider the merits of our complaint, the thousands of people who we allege voted unlawfully, is for us to have this meeting.”
Shafer defended his movements then and now by way of bringing up an episode that performed out in Hawaii in 1960. Democrats met that yr after Republican Richard Nixon was once qualified as the state’s winner and despatched 3 electoral votes to the U.S. Senate backing John F. Kennedy.
Todd Zywicki, a regulation professor at George Mason University in Virginia, signed a July 11 declaration concluding movements by way of Shafer and different Georgia Republican electors had been “lawful, reasonable, proper and necessary” making an allowance for the election contest and the Hawaii precedent.
Lawyers for the indicted electors argue it was up to Congress to decide which slates will have to be counted.
But Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ place of business, in a court docket submitting, disputed Shafer’s declare that the movements of Georgia Republicans in 2020 bore any similarity to the ones of Hawaii Democrats in 1960. Her workforce cites a big difference — Democrats in the end received a recount in Hawaii {that a} court docket affirmed and the governor qualified, sending respectable paperwork to the Senate.
“The factual situations are so readily distinguishable as to make the comparison meaningless,” Willis’ team wrote, arguing towards Shafer’s try to take away his case to federal court docket. Willis’ place of business wrote that the Republican meeting “was used to further a clumsy but relentless pressure campaign on the vice president and state legislatures, and as a means to publicly undermine the legitimate results of the presidential election.”
Sinners, the Trump marketing campaign staffer who helped prepare the meeting, now rejects its objective. He denies the perception that Trump received Georgia and now works for Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state who got here to nationwide consideration for rebuffing pressure from the then-president to “find” sufficient votes to make certain his win. Sinners cooperated with the U.S. House committee that investigated the violent rebel on Jan. 6, 2021. He hasn’t mentioned whether or not he is cooperating with Willis.
In an interview, he made his regrets transparent about what opened up in the Georgia Capitol all the way through one of the maximum turbulent classes in American politics.
“This was an ill-advised attempt by the former president’s campaign to create a false reality — a victory,” Sinners mentioned.