If you're one of Arizona's fake electors, Monday could be a no good, very bad day

Last week, a key figure in the 2020 fake elector scheme traveled to Nevada, where this week, six fake electors were indicted.

Trump-aligned lawyer Kenneth Chesebro wrote memos detailing how Republicans could send false slates of presidential electors to Congress in an attempt to give Donald Trump the win or at least delay the Jan. 6, 2021, certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

And on Monday, Chesebro is scheduled to travel to Arizona to meet with investigators from Attorney General Kris Mayes’ office, according to the Washington Post’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez.

Meanwhile in Wisconsin, 10 fake electors settled a civil lawsuit this week, admitting their actions were part of a scheme to overturn Biden’s victory.

I picture Arizona’s fake electors, breathing deeply into paper bags.

Chesebro is talking as part of a guilty plea

It appears those fine patriots who tried to steal Arizona’s vote in the 2020 election may finally get their day in court … to explain how they were trying to make America great again by making democracy a thing of the past.

Mayes vowed during last year’s campaign to investigate Arizona’s fake electors after her Republican predecessor Mark Brnovich neglected to do so, busy as he was chasing after Trump’s approval for his ill-fated U.S. Senate campaign.

The Democratic attorney general assigned a team of prosecutors to the investigation in May, and it appears Mayes is inching ever closer to indictments, with a little help from Georgia.

Chesebro in October pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit filing false documents in Fulton County, Ga., and agreed to testify against his fellow co-conspirators in order to avoid prison. He also agreed to turn over all emails and text messages to prosecutors.

Now he’s apparently coming clean about his part in the conspiracy elsewhere.

His testimony could be key in Arizona

Nevada is the third state to bring criminal charges against its fake electors, following Michigan and Georgia. Chesebro is listed as a witness in the indictments.

And Arizona?

The Post reports he’ll be here on Monday.

“My client, Kenneth Chesebro, will travel anywhere in the United States to tell the truth about what happened leading up to the events of Jan. 6, 2021,” Robert Langford, his Nevada attorney, told the Post last week.

Chesebro’s testimony could be be key.

According to his Fulton County, Ga., indictment, one of Chesebro’s memos “provides detailed, state-specific instructions for how Trump presidential elector nominees in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin would meet and cast electoral votes” for Trump, even though he lost the election in those states.

Those memos “evolved over time from a legal strategy to preserve (Trump’s) rights to a corrupt plan to subvert the federal government function by stopping Biden electors’ votes from being counted and certified.”

How did that 'corrupt plan' evolve here?

I, for one, would love to know how that evolution played out here in Arizona.

Specifically, how Arizona’s 11 Trump electors came to be meeting at state Republican Party headquarters on Dec. 14, 2020, signing documents falsely claiming to be “duly elected and qualified” to cast Arizona’s electoral votes for the guy who didn’t win.

How these “patriots” — including two who are now state senators (Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern), the now-former chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party (Kelli Ward) and a top executive with Turning Point USA (Tyler Bowyer) — came up with the same wild idea that just coincidentally occurred to Republicans in six other swing states won by Biden.

Or how, even as those phonies were meeting in Phoenix to cast their non-existent votes for Trump, across town a group of Republican legislators were signing a letter to Vice President Mike Pence and Congress urging them to accept Arizona’s “alternate” electoral votes.

In all, 29 incoming and outgoing Republican legislators signed the request, calling it “A Joint Resolution of the 54th Legislature” and attaching the state seal so it would look official.

The plot involved more than 11 fake electors

I’d also be curious how then-Rep. Mark Finchem, one of the state’s loudest stop the stealers, came to be hand carrying the lawmakers’ request to Washington on Jan. 5, 2021, putting it into the hands of one of Trump’s strongest acolytes on Capitol Hill, Rep. Andy Biggs.

Or how Biggs came to be videoconferencing with Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, asking him to sign onto the legislators’ request and support the decertification of Arizona’s vote.

Bowers declined.

Biggs went forth anyway, joining with Reps. Paul Gosar, Debbie Lesko and more than 140 esteemed members of Congress to reject Arizona’s vote.

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

Arizona’s fake electors have mostly laid low since details of this scam on America have trickled out. 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.

Fake electors, beware: A Trump ally is ready to come clean

That might actually work if we were in Pennsylvania or New Mexico, where the Trump electors added that caveat to the official certifications they sent to Congress and the National Archives.

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

In Pennsylvania, they 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.”

Mayes should broaden her investigation

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.

Me? I’m hoping Mayes will broaden her investigation to look beyond the 11 “electors” who so proudly put their name to a fake document.

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 plot to steal the vote in Arizona and other swing states to the storming of the nation’s Capitol to stop Joe Biden from becoming president.

I’m guessing Kenneth Chesebro knows exactly what happened here, and on Monday he’ll be in Phoenix.

That thump you just heard? I picture Arizona’s fake electors dropping into a dead faint.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @LaurieRoberts or on Threads at @laurierobertsaz.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Fake electors in Arizona are about to have a no good, very bad day