Arizona's fake electors aren't the only ones who should be squirming (let's name names)

Fast and furious. That’s how the excuses are flying these days as prosecutors (finally) turn their eye to fake electors.

Here in Arizona, Attorney General Kris Mayes has escalated a probe into the 11 “patriots” who falsely claimed to be duly elected by the state’s voters to cast the state’s electoral votes for Donald Trump.

But they aren’t the only ones who threw in with the scheme to steal Arizona’s vote. (More on that in a minute.)

The faker electors have mostly been mum.

Fake electors said they were 'duly elected'

Their enablers and supporters insist they were merely a backup plan, casting Arizona’s electoral votes for Trump in the event that lawsuits challenging the election were successful.

Yeah, that might work if we were in Pennsylvania or New Mexico, where the Trump electors added that caveat to their votes.

In New Mexico they signed, “on the understanding that it might later be determined that [they] are the duly elected and qualified Electors.”

The Trump electors in Pennsylvania said their votes for Trump should count only “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.”

But Arizona’s fake electors offered no such hedge. They signed documents simply declaring themselves “duly elected and qualified electors” and casting their votes for the guy who didn’t win.

This isn't how it went down in Hawaii

Their scheme might even work if they could credibly point to Hawaii circa 1960, but there are key differences.

There, Democrats met on the appointed day to cast the state’s electoral votes for John Kennedy, even though certified results showed Richard Nixon squeaked out a win.

But a recount was underway on the day presidential electors were required to cast their ballots. A recount that Kennedy ultimately won.

There was no recount underway in Arizona on Dec. 14, 2020.

In fact, every pre- and post-election test of Arizona’s equipment, as required by law, turned up no evidence of a problem. And every lawsuit challenging the results had failed.

AZ GOP attorney knew they were fake

Yet there they were at Arizona Republican Party headquarters, declaring Trump the winner.

Among them were Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward, state Sens. Anthony Kern and Jake Hoffman, and Tyler Bowyer, a top executive with Turning Point USA who also sits on the Republican National Committee.

They were following the template set out in Trump attorney John Eastman’s two-page memo, detailing his step-by-step plan for how Arizona and six other states would submit “dual” sets of electors, allowing then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election or at least throw it into Congress, where Republicans could then declare Trump the winner.

Even the Arizona Republican Party’s attorney knew what they were doing was as phony as a $3 bill as he helped Team Trump flesh out the plan.

“We would just be sending in ‘fake’ electoral votes to Pence so that ‘someone’ in Congress can make an objection when they start counting votes, and start arguing that the ‘fake’ votes should be counted,” Phoenix attorney Jack Wilenchik wrote in a Dec. 8, 2020, email to Boris Epshteyn, a Trump adviser who also was working on the plan.

In a follow-up email, Wilenchik wrote that “‘alternative’ votes is probably a better term than ‘fake’ votes.”

Republican lawmakers played their part

Even as the phonies were meeting in Phoenix to cast their non-existent votes for Trump on Dec. 14, 2020, across town a group of Republican legislators were signing a letter to Pence and Congress.

In it they asked, “that the alternate 11 electoral votes be accepted for to Donald J. Trump or to have all electoral votes nullified completely until a full forensic audit can be conducted.”

But there was no audit under way. If nullification was really the goal, then why ask Pence and Congress to accept the phony Trump electors?

Then-Rep. Mark Finchem, one of the state’s loudest stop the stealers, hand carried the lawmakers’ request to Washington on Jan. 5, 2021, putting it into the hands of none other than Rep. Andy Biggs.

Biggs was one of Trump’s strongest acolytes on Capitol Hill.

He, along with Rep. Paul Gosar, attended post-election White House planning sessions to spitball ways to keep Trump in office.

Rep. Biggs wanted more. He didn't get it

In fact, the votes hadn’t even been fully counted when Biggs started pushing the notion of setting aside electors in Arizona and elsewhere.

In a Nov. 6, 2020, text to White House Chief of Staff Mark Mark Meadows, Biggs suggested that state legislatures should appoint electors “in the various states where there’s been shenanigans,” a move he acknowledged would be “highly controversial.”

That was a non-starter with Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers.

Another view: Michigan has a roadmap to bust our fake electors

Instead, 29 incoming and outgoing Republican legislators sent their request to Pence and Congress, calling it “A Joint Resolution of the 54th Legislature” and attaching the state seal so it would look official.

On Jan. 5, 2021, Biggs texted Finchem, asking for the letter signed by those legislators — the one urging Congress to accept a Republican slate of presidential electors from Arizona, instead of the Democratic slate chosen by voters.

The next morning, Jan. 6, 2021, Biggs videoconferenced with Bowers, asking if he would sign on and support decertifying Arizona’s electors.

Bowers said he wouldn’t.

This was a carefully planned scheme

Biggs and Gosar went forward with the scheme to reject Arizona’s legitimate electors anyway, as did Rep. Debbie Lesko — though the vote, which ultimately failed, had to be delayed a few hours as Trump’s supporters stormed the building.

You begin to understand those reports that Biggs sought a presidential pardon, though he denies it.

This wasn’t just 11 rubes who decided on a whim to protest Biden’s win by casting a symbolic electoral vote for Trump.

This was a carefully planned scheme, meticulously coordinated — from the seeds of doubt deeply planted to erode trust in our elections to the fake “electors” who were part of a scheme to steal the vote in Arizona and other swing states to the storming of the Capitol to stop Joe Biden from becoming president.

And certain Arizonans appear to be in on it up to their eyeballs.

Who signed the letter to Congress?

Here are the Republicans who signed the letter urging Pence and Congress to accept the fake electors, along with their status at the time of the signing:

Sen.-elect Kelly Townsend of Mesa, Rep. Bret Roberts of Maricopa, Rep. Kevin Payne of Peoria, Rep. Mark Finchem of Oro Valley, Sen. David Farnsworth of Mesa.

Sen. Sonny Borrelli of Lake Havasu City, Rep. Leo Biasiucci of Lake Havasu City, Rep. Anthony Kern of Glendale, Rep. David Cook of Sierra Vista, Sen. Sylvia Allen of Snowflake.

Rep. John Fillmore of Apache Junction, Sen.-elect Nancy Barto of Phoenix, Rep. Travis Grantham of Gilbert, Senate Majority Leader Warren Petersen of Gilbert, Rep. Walter Blackman of Snowflake.

Rep. Steve Pierce of Prescott, Rep. Shawnna Bolick of Phoenix, Rep. Tony Rivero of Peoria, Rep. Noel Campbell of Prescott.

Concurring: Sen. David Gowan of Sierra Vista, outgoing Rep. Bob Thorpe of Flagstaff, Rep.-elects Jacqueline Parker of Mesa, Brenda Barton of Payson, Beverly Pingerelli of Peoria, Joseph Chaplik of Scottsdale, Jake Hoffman of Queen Creek, Judy Burges of Sun City West, Quang Nguyen of Prescott Valley and Sen.-elect Wendy Rogers of Flagstaff.

Note: Sen. Paul Boyer of Glendale initially signed an early draft of the letter but said he asked that his name be removed when the wording was changed to request that Congress either accept Trump’s electors or nullify the vote.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona fake electors had a cast of elected leaders helping them