Donald Trump's campaign team physically flew "fake elector" ballots across the country to Washington DC in a last-ditch effort to overturn the 2020 election, a new report claims.
According to CNN, leaked witness testimony from a Michigan state investigation shows how Mr Trump's aides scrambled to deliver the allegedly fraudulent paperwork to vice president Mike Pence before he could certify the election results.
The so-called "fake electors" plot hinged on the fact that American presidents are not directly elected by the people, but rather by 538 "electors" who are selected by their states based on the outcome of the vote.
Mr Trump's team allegedly pressured state legislators to ignore the vote and choose their electors by fiat. When that did not work, they assembled their own group of electors with no legal standing and pushed vice president Mike Pence to accept it instead of the real ones.
Multiple people have been criminally charged for their involvement in this scheme, and one – pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro – has pled guilty to conspiring to file false documents.
Now, audio clips from Mr Chesebro's testimony released by CNN appear to show that Mr Trump's team went to the trouble of flying the fake electors' paperwork across the country in order to get them in front of Mr Pence before the election result was certified.
"The Trump campaign [was] freaked out that the Michigan votes [were] still in the sorting facility in Michigan, which [didn't] look like they were gonna get to Pence in time," Mr Chesebro allegedly told investigators.
"They didn't have to charter a jet, but they did commercial. This [was] a high level decision to get the Michigan and Wisconsin votes there, and they had to enlist a US senator to try to expedite it to get it to Pence in time."
The Independent has asked Mr Chesebro for comment, via his lawyer.
According to testimony and documents seen by CNN, the Trump team initially considered chartering a private jet to deliver the ballots but ended up entrusting them to a campaign staffer and a Wisconsin GOP official who booked commercial flights.
Federal election law says that elector ballots must be presented in person in the US Senate so that legislators can tally their votes.
Not all Republicans were comfortable with this idea. “Freaking trump idiots want someone to fly original elector papers to the Senate president,” one Wisconsin party official wrote in an email on 4 January, according to the House committee report.
Mr Chesebro allegedly told investigators that he handed off the documents to the aide of a GOP congressman, who then attempted to ensure they ended up on Pence's desk.
In the end, Pence rejected the scheme, writing on 6 January 2021 that his oath to the US constitution did not allow him to "claim unilateral authority [over] which electoral votes should be counted and which should not".
