On the heels of a subpoena for him from the Jan. 6 committee, reports are piling up fast to suggest that former President Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was responsible for overseeing a Trump campaign scheme to send fake electors to seven states that the twice-impeached president lost in 2020. 

First reported by The Washington Post and then again through anonymous sources over at CNN, individuals familiar with the election subversion scheme said Giuliani was engaged in “multiple planning calls between Trump campaign officials and GOP state operatives” where discussions centered on efforts to secure pro-Trump electors and prepare illegitimate electoral certificates.  Giuliani also “orchestrated” at least one of those calls, according to sources familiar with the matter. 

Trump’s reelection campaign made no secret about the plan to send “alternate electors” to battleground states, but the extent to which Giuliani and other Trump campaign officials, as well as an anchor from the pro-Trump One American News network, were “actively choreograph[ing] the process,” CNN reported, is only now starting to come to light. 

The rival slates were created for Michigan, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania for Dec. 14, 2020—the official day for the Electoral College vote. 

Pro-Trump electors convened in state capitol buildings and elsewhere—spaces arranged with the help of Trump campaign officials—to ready the certificates that would eventually be sent to the U.S. Senate and the National Archives and Records Administration. 

CNN reported Friday that at least one of the fake electors who also signed a certificate that went to the Archives, Meshawn Maddock of Michigan, recently bragged about how they “fought to seat” Trump electors there. 

“The Trump campaign asked us to do that,” Maddock said at a recent event hosted by Stand Up Michigan, a conservative organization. 

A former campaign staffer reflected on the maneuvering by Trump’s team to get the favorable slates drafted, circulated, and submitted. 

“It was Rudy and these misfit characters who started calling the shots. The campaign was throwing enough shit at the wall to see what would stick,” the staff member told CNN. 

The theory leaned on by the former president’s campaign was that if they secured rival slates and sent them to the Archives, they would be ready to act if the courts sided with Trump in states where he lost to Joe Biden. With the electors in play and the certificates created, the Trump campaign felt it could reinforce its theory that then-Vice President Mike Pence would have what he needed to formally toss Biden’s electors and replace them with their own once the counting of the electoral votes was underway on Jan. 6. 

Of all the fake certificates submitted, only two states—Pennsylvania and New Mexico—had electors who managed to convince Trump campaign officials to add disclaimers to the documents.

Those disclaimers effectively explained that the pro-Trump electors were lying in wait should the 45th president’s legal bids succeed. The other five states did not include such disclaimers.

“It’s not clear that any of the fake electors themselves participated in strategy sessions with top Trump campaign brass,” CNN reported Friday before noting that Maddock and at least one other pro-Trump elector, Sam DeMarco of Pennsylvania, have publicly acknowledged that they were in contact with the Trump campaign.

Dana Nessel, the Michigan attorney general, last week referred the fake electoral certificates in Michigan to federal prosecutors, saying that it should be a simple case of “forgery of a public record.”

“This is not political theater, it’s not protected speech,” Nessel told The Washington Post. 

New Mexico’s attorney general, Hector Balderas, has also referred the certificates to prosecutors for review, as did Josh Kaul, the attorney general for Wisconsin. 

“I believe it’s critical that the federal government fully investigates and prosecutes any unlawful actions in furtherance of any seditious conspiracy,” Kaul told the Wisconsin Examiner last week. 

Trump White House officials like Boris Epshteyn—also hit with a subpoena last week—have chalked up the certificates as mere rational responses to the campaign’s concerns over election fraud. 

According to records already obtained by the Jan. 6 committee, Mark Meadows, Trump’s onetime chief of staff, received numerous text messages over the elector strategy; one message described the plan as “highly controversial.”

In one exchange, Meadows said he “loved” the plan and acknowledged in another text that the Trump campaign had a “team on it” when discussions of appointing alternate electors came up. 

Giuliani may have spearheaded the plan, but he also reportedly received help from OAN correspondent Christina Bobb. Court records that were part of a civil lawsuit have shown Giuliani indicated openly that Bobb was “part of the legal team” that assisted the Trump campaign as Biden prepared to take office. 

The public watchdog group American Oversight was able to secure emails showing Bobb had contact with an Arizona legislator where she aired the campaign’s concerns of voter fraud. Bobb also said she was corresponding with the lawmaker on Giuliani’s behalf. 

According to the Post, Giuliani also allegedly shared letters with Pence’s team that objected to Biden’s electors and recommended Trump electors be installed instead. 

Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, told reporters that the vice president’s legal team reviewed the letters but were left unconvinced that there was a way to constitutionally accept Trump electors who were not officially certified by the state.