FULTON COUNTY, Georgia (Washington Insider Magazine) – The Fulton County special grand jury is hearing testimony in the criminal probe into potential interference in the 2020 election by the former president Donald Trump and his supporters. Nearly a dozen of Georgia’s “fake electors” revealed Tuesday that they have been subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury.
In a court petition, lawyers for 11 of the state’s 16 fake presidential electors sought to have the subpoenas thrown out as being “unreasonable and oppressive,” according NBC NEWS.
The attorneys further argued that the electors had consented to voluntary interviews with the team looking into election tampering starting in April and that the Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office had initially stated that their clients were “witnesses, not subjects or targets” of the inquiry.
After the 2020 election, Republicans in 7 states that Joe Biden won—Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, New Mexico, Georgia, and Arizona—sent certificates pretending to be from Trump electors to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Two sets of electors were produced as a result of that effort, one official group chosen by the states and the other made up.
The House Jan. 6 panel held a public hearing last month when evidence and records purported to suggest that Trump’s campaign had planned to rig the 2020 election by setting up a slate of substitute “fake electors” in those 7 states.
The panel claimed that the fake electors filed bogus certificates of Trump victories to the National Archives in the hopes that they would be exchanged for the real electoral votes that assured Joe Biden’s victory by then-Vice President Mike Pence.
The 11 Georgia electors’ attorneys said on Tuesday that their clients were not aware of any alleged scheme to tamper with their ballots by former Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.
The lawyers contended that despite their clients’ assistance, the county prosecutors modified their strategy in the investigation.
The lawyers said that the electors had the authority to cast “contingent” votes, citing parallels between the acts taken in 2020 and those taken by Democratic electors in the 1960 presidential election between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy that was subject to legal dispute.
A parallel subpoena to testify in the investigation of Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., a Trump loyalist, is also being contested in Fulton County.
This year, according to the Justice Department, federal prosecutors were investigating the potential legal repercussions for anyone engaged in the plot to use phony Electoral College member slates to declare Trump the victor of states that Biden won.
