January 13, 2022

Forged Certificates For Trump! (Pennsylvania Edition)

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Steeped in political intrigue, this story has been brewing for a couple of days.

We'll start here:

American Oversight has obtained copies of phony electoral vote certificates from seven states that were submitted to Congress as part of the failed attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The fake electoral certificates were assembled by groups of Trump supporters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin who sought to replace the valid presidential electors from their state — who had been chosen by voters in free and fair elections — with bogus slates of pro-Trump electors.

None of the certificates contains any indication that they list illegitimate slates of electors not chosen by those states’ voters. [Emphasis added.]

You can find the "certificates" from Pennsylvania here (pg 32-43). We'll get to them in a minute.

Politico touched on this a few days ago:

The public focus of Congress’ Jan. 6 investigation, so far, is what happened in Washington, D.C. Behind the scenes, the probe’s state-level work is kicking into overdrive.

The House committee investigating the Capitol attack has gathered thousands of records from state officials and interviewed a slate of witnesses as it attempts to retrace former President Donald Trump's attempts to subvert the 2020 election, particularly in four key states that swung the presidency to Joe Biden. They're getting ready to take their work public, possibly as soon as the spring.

And:

The select panel asked states for any scrap of evidence to justify allegations of election fraud that Trump baselessly promoted, focusing much of its efforts on officials in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Those states found virtually no evidence of fraud, according to Thompson. [Emphasis added.]

And here's the BFD:

As Trump's team pushed its discredited voter fraud narrative, the National Archives received forged certificates of ascertainment declaring him and then-Vice President Mike Pence the winners of both Michigan and Arizona and their electors after the 2020 election. Public records requests show the secretaries of state for those states sent those certificates to the Jan. 6 panel, along with correspondence between the National Archives and state officials about the documents. 
Rachel Maddow had some visuals:

Here's where things get interesting-er. Here's the text from Wisconsin's faked certificate (pg 45):
WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, being the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Wisconsin, do hereby certify the following...

And Nevada's (pg 28):

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, being the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Nevada, do hereby certify the following...

There's a word that linguists use to describe the relationship between those to groups of words: identity. This is at the heart of Maddow's (undoubtedly correct) assertion that the forged documents from those state could not be coincidental. Where did the original text come from?

Now let's look at Pennsylvania's:

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, on the understanding that if, as a result of a final non-appealable Court Order or other proceeding prescribed by law, we are ultimately recognized as being the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Pennsylvania, hereby certify the following...

Look at what they added: 

...on the understanding that if, as a result of a final non-appealable Court Order or other proceeding prescribed by law, we are ultimately recognized as...

Everything else is exactly the same. For some reason they felt compelled to give themselves some sort of political cover. Why?

If only to show that they knew how fishy the original text was?

But they finessed the forgery sent it in anyway.

What does that tell you?

I'm wondering of Pennsylvania's own players in the Trump mob coup (Representative Scott Perry and State Senator Doug Mastriano) have any comment on these forgeries.

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