News Roundup: Fake Electors and Voting Machine Schemes

Co-Conspirator no. 5 laid out the strategy for the fake electors plot in a newly uncovered memo, and election deniers discussed an alleged voting machine breach in Michigan in public records we obtained.

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The indictment of former President Trump has brought with it renewed scrutiny on perhaps one of the most significant components of his and his allies’ scheme to overturn the 2020 election: the fake electors plot.

The New York Times reported on a previously unknown memo sent by lawyer Kenneth Chesebro (referred to in the indictment as Co-Conspirator 5) outlining the strategy. “In mid-December,” the Times explained, “the false Trump electors could go through the motions of voting as if they had the authority to do so. Then, on Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally count those slates of votes, rather than the official and certified ones for Mr. Biden.”
Those involved in the fake-electors plot raised concerns about its legality, as the Washington Post highlighted this week, leading to the inclusion of hedging language in Pennsylvania’s and New Mexico’s false slates. “Legal experts said proving that Trump and his co-conspirators were lying when they said the electors were meeting just in case will be a central challenge of winning a conviction,” the Post wrote.
In 2021, American Oversight obtained and published copies of the seven false certificates, documenting the involvement of the Trump backers who fraudulently signed them.

One of the fake electors in Wisconsin was Robert Spindell, a member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

We obtained emails that suggest that Spindell was in touch with the State Assembly’s partisan election investigation, led by attorney Michael Gableman before his firing last summer.
Last week, a Wisconsin judge ordered the state elections commission to release all records related to Spindell and comments he made about the fake electors plot, as part of a lawsuit brought by Law Forward.

Of course, even after the fake-electors scheme failed to undo Trump’s election loss, the efforts to sow distrust in the results continued, not just in the form of partisan investigations and “audits,” but also in alleged attempts to illegally access voting equipment, including in Michigan.

Last week, three allies of the former president — Matthew DePerno, Stefanie Lambert, and Daire Rendon — were charged with crimes for their involvement in the alleged scheme that took place in early 2021 in which conservative activists got a hold of vote tabulators from three counties and ran “tests” on the machines in a bid to find proof of voter fraud.
Once again, American Oversight has obtained evidence documenting apparent elements of the effort as it unfolded. The files include records from Cyber Ninjas — the firm behind the discredited Arizona “audit” — in which CEO Doug Logan discusses the voting machine breach with Lambert and other activists. On March 18, 2021, Logan texted Lambert, “I created a new group with Ben [Cotton], Matt [DePerno], you and I.”
That same day, Logan texted Ben Cotton of the firm CyFIR: “The MI team has gotten access to another tabulator & [ballot marking device]. They’re asking if we can have someone there tonight to start a data extraction from the two devices as early as tomorrow morning.”
Logan provided more details about the devices and added, “The equipment is in the greater Detroit area.” According to the records we obtained, Logan and Cotton arranged flights to Detroit and arrived the next day.

On the Records

DeSantis’ New Chief of Staff Alex Kelly
Florida Secretary of Commerce Alex Kelly will reportedly become Gov. Ron DeSantis’s new chief of staff, replacing James Uthmeier, who is joining the governor’s presidential campaign.

We obtained emails between Kelly and Esther Byrd, a member of the State Board of Education. Byrd’s appointment to the board drew criticism thanks to her past vocal defense of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
In an April 2022 email, Byrd asked Kelly if it was possible for the state to challenge a federal law she believed prohibited tracking “students attending our public schools [who] are illegal immigrants.” Kelly said that he wasn’t aware of such a law, adding that federal law required children to be served in public schools regardless of their immigration status so there would be “no perceived benefit to asking for that data.” The two scheduled a call to discuss that question and other issues.
Another set of records from the same month show that Kelly forwarded to two staffers an email from the Florida Citizens Alliance that contained complaints about Manatee County’s African American History Task Force curriculum. The complaints cited racist arguments about the existence of white European slaves as a way of minimizing the U.S.’s history of racial slavery and said that the task force should not “single out the USA as being ‘especially egregious’ in regards to slavery.”

News Roundup: Fake Electors and Voting Machine Schemes

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