Dec. 14, 2020 was a heady day for Arizona Republicans. Despite the fact that their candidate Donald Trump had been defeated in Arizona, despite the fact that his defeat had been certified by the state’s governor, Doug Ducey, in late November, there was a sense of jocularity in the air. This was the prevailing spirit as 11 Republicans gathered around an ordinary conference table to blithely falsify the results of their fellow Arizonans’ votes and summarily disenfranchise 1,672,143 of their fellow citizens, who had voted for the election’s lawful winner.

The Wannsee-like informality of the proceedings was underscored by the presence of water bottles and coffee cups, the latter hastily moved aside as a young man in a jogging outfit passed out white sheets of paper. The papers were copies of the fraudulent, collective statement of the group. He sidestepped not one but two American flags (one draped on a wall and covering some unsightly electrical cords painted a sickly yellow) as he placed before each participant the paper they would all sign, betraying their fellow citizens with a staid disregard that one could only describe as banal.

But unlike their German counterparts of 1942, these attendees—several of whom were sporting baseball caps accompanying their business casual attire, many with wedding bands and diamond rings shining as they clasped their little white plastic pens—chose, in their unbridled enthusiasm, to make a visual record of their treachery. Before a piece of drywall papered with the red-lettered emblem of the Republican Party of Arizona, each of the eight men and three women leaned forward, clasping their hands, some nodding and smiling as the document was read out aloud to them in order to dispel any doubt about what it was they were doing.

Meanwhile, the camera, held by an unknown operator, captured the moment in all its treachery, embedding all of the participants (one partially masked, the others boldly free of such trifles) in its pitiless, digital sweep:

After the recitation, each of the participants expressed their approval of the proceedings with a seemingly spontaneous, heartfelt exhibition of polite applause. As explained in this USA Today article from January:

It described the “undersigned” as the “duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Arizona …”

That they were neither “elected” nor “qualified” by the irredeemable and inconvenient fact that their candidate had lost the election seems to be completely absent from their concerns. After all, they had fulfilled their task. Their sense of accomplishment is as visible as it was palpable.

Because they had, in fact, accomplished something. In their starched shirts, sport jackets, pressed blouses, and all of the accompanying certitude and propriety those things manifest, they managed—in a matter of mere minutes—to betray not only their fellow Arizonans, but also their country and everything it has tried to represent and aspire to over the past two and a half centuries.  

The importance of that moment seemed strangely lost on them. But no matter. The video will always exist to tell the story.