Federal prosecutors are now looking closely at the slates of false electors and the forged certifications that were created by Republicans intent on providing Donald Trump with support for this attempted coup. Those involved faced potential charges of mail fraud and falsifying official documents as well as potential charges of a conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Republicans in at least seven states—Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, and New Mexico—prepared counterfeit documents supposedly sending slates of electors to Congress that would give their votes to Trump. All of these documents falsely reported the results of elections in those states and purported to be the “official” results of that state’s election. In some cases, the documents also included misuse of official state seals, or claimed to have been issued by the state legislature.

As The Washington Post reports, the creation of these documents was often overlooked at the time, or dismissed as a “political stunt.” But the more that has been learned about the scheme created within the Trump White House to maintain power by overturning the election, the clearer it has become that these documents were intended to provide the pretext Trump required for disputing the vote in states clearly won by President Joe Biden. The Justice Department has now responded to multiple requests to examine these documents and the circumstances surrounding their creation for potential crimes. 

Though the false electoral certificates only gained wide attention in the media earlier this month, the Post points out that their creation was far from a secret at the time. However, in Post coverage of the certificates in December 2020, the certificates were treated as little more than a stunt, saying of the false slates, “These votes have no legal meaning, according to election law experts. The law only recognizes votes from electors chosen according to state law—which, in every one of these states, is the Democratic electors.”

The New York Times reports that it’s unclear whether the certificates were created on the initiative of the individuals in each state or whether they were created at the request of the Trump campaign. However, that’s not true, because the role these certificates were intended to play is absolutely clear.

It wasn’t until September 2021 that the public learned of a coup plot circulated around the White House by Trump attorney John Eastman. In a now infamous “six point memo,” Eastman laid out a scheme that would allow then-Vice President Mike Pence to claim that the election was in dispute. The first point of that plan was for Pence to call the roll of states until he reached Arizona. At that point, Pence was to declare:

Pence was then to repeat this claim for six other states that Trump lost but claimed to have won. Those states would be the same states for which false slates of electors had been sent.

Even the revelation of Eastman’s memo didn’t seem to gain much traction in the media, which continued to treat the entire scheme as something that had never represented any genuine threat. But in December, it was learned that the scheme to conduct a coup on Jan. 6 hadn’t been limited to a few officials in the White House. In fact, a lengthy PowerPoint presentation had been prepared and shown to Republican members of Congress in advance of Jan. 6, informing them of the roles they needed to play in order to make Trump’s coup attempt successful.

In order to preserve power for Donald Trump:

White House attorneys prepared, debated, and updated a plan by which the results of the election could be overturned. To make this happen, they needed two things: for Pence to declare that states had “multiple slates of electors” and for Republicans in Congress to dispute the official count of Biden electors.


Republicans in seven states prepared false certificates to support the plot, sending these documents to the National Archives in order to perpetuate the plot. These documents were meant to provide false evidence for the plot.


Congressional Republicans attended a presentation during which they were instructed on how and when they should dispute the vote so that claims of “multiple slates of electors” could be put forward.

This was not a matter of Donald Trump throwing a tantrum, or of a few close supporters scheming in the dark. This was a broad conspiracy that included Republicans at the state and federal level working together in an attempt to overthrow American democracy. Much of this this coup planning took place with the press looking on—and treating it as no big deal.

It was a failed coup attempt. But it was still a coup attempt. And hundreds of people were involved in the conspiracy to make it happen.

These false certificates are direct, written, signed, physical evidence of that attempted coup.