The idea is that Trump’s team would get Republican state legislators to appoint their own electors who would then vote for Trump in the electoral college despite the fact that Joe Biden had won their state.This would have been a massive constitutional violation and it’s possible that it could be prosecuted as a crime.
On Tuesday, April 4th, 2023, former US President Donald Trump entered a Manhattan courtroom and pled not guilty to 34 crimes. This is a result of four separate criminal investigations that have been gathering evidence since Trump lost the 2020 election and left office in January of 2021. The first phase of these investigations involves gathering evidence, such as interviewing witnesses, reviewing financial records, and examining texts and emails. If twelve members of a randomly selected grand jury think the evidence makes sense, they will issue an indictment and the prosecutor can file charges. In the case of Trump, the state of New York has officially charged him with falsifying business records in the first degree. This is related to the hush money paid to an adult film actress to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Trump.
In addition, a special grand jury in Georgia has recommended multiple indictments related to Trump’s attempts to steal the election. The team of Federal special counsel Jack Smith is also looking into the possibility that Trump broke laws related to fake electors. All of these investigations are trying to determine if Trump’s behavior after the election constituted criminal activity. The state’s electors cast their votes for the presidential candidate who won the most votes in their state. For example, if Joe Biden won the state, then Biden’s electors would win the state and he would get that many electoral votes. The Trump team attempted to assemble slates of alternative electors in key swing states even though Biden had won the state, however, they were not allowed in and resorted to signing the document in the basement of the state’s Republican headquarters and sending it off to Washington, DC. Trump’s team also led similar efforts in six other states where Biden had won. A grand jury in DC has been hearing evidence in this case for months but they have yet to vote on it.
At the same time, a special prosecutor is also looking into a fourth case against Trump involving an “unprecedented FBI search at the home of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property”. This inventory list from the raid revealed that dozens of documents labeled classified, confidential, and top secret were found. There has been some reporting that some of these documents related to intelligence that could have exposed certain US informants or sources and the intelligence community considered this important information that should not have been accessible at Mar-a-Lago. The grand jury in DC is still hearing all of this evidence and now that Donald Trump is no longer in office, it is time to determine if any of his unprecedented behavior was also illegal and, if so, what to do about it.