Federal prosecutors are investigating the fake Electoral College certificates declaring Donald Trump the winner of seven states carried by Joe Biden in the 2020 election. 

These phony electoral votes were notarized and submitted to the National Archives and to Mike Pence as president of the senate by Trump loyalists, according to the process specified for the real electoral votes. 

Similarities in language and formatting between the fake certificates suggests a far-reaching conspiracy orchestrated at the national level. 

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You can’t falsely represent yourself as a qualified Elector and your sketchy friends as your state’s Electoral College, even if you hope a court will somehow redeem your lie.

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Trump lawyer John Eastman’s notorious memos cite dual slates of electors from these very states as raw material for the procedural coup of J6. 

They outlined various pseudo-legal options for the vice president to steal the election from the podium. All of these involved the fake electoral vote. 

According to Eastman, Pence could either count the fake votes instead of the real ones, throw out the votes from the “disputed” states entirely or send the election back to state legislatures (which Eastman and Rudy Giuliani frantically lobbied to endorse the fake electors instead of the real ones). 

While fake electors from Pennsylvania and New Mexico submitted disclaimers along with their fake electoral votes saying they should only be counted if a court were to overturn the election, the remaining five did not. 

The fake certificates from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin asserted that the signatories were in fact the “duly elected and qualified Electors” from their respective Electoral Colleges. They were not. 

GOP apologists insist these fake certificates were merely an attempt to keep Trump’s legal options open if a court were to overturn the election. However, Eastman’s memos were written after all legal challenges had been exhausted. He had no intention of waiting for a court’s blessing to count them. 

If you sign your name to a lie, it doesn’t matter if you can imagine circumstances in which your lie might come true. It was still a lie when you signed your name to it. 

It’s illegal to write a bad check, even if you hope someone will put money in your account. You can’t claim a dependent because someone might leave a baby on your doorstep between now and Tax Day. 

By the same token, you can’t falsely represent yourself as a qualified Elector and your sketchy friends as your state’s Electoral College, even if you hope a court will somehow redeem your lie. 

These fake electors were impersonating public officials and usurping the authority of their offices to issue bogus decrees. There are laws against that. 

The fact that the fake electors in Pennsylvania and New Mexico insisted on submitting their certificates with a disclaimer suggests that they knew submitting a pack of notarized lies could get them into legal trouble. 

The attorney general of Pennsylvania agreed that the disclaimer language was probably enough to keep Pennsylvania’s fake electors on the right side of the state’s forgery laws. The fact that none of the other fake slates used a disclaimer suggests that they intended to deceive. 

Maybe the fake electors from the non-disclaimer slates were duped by MAGA operatives. Maybe they were told that these certificates would only come into play if a court reversed the election. Nevertheless, the fake electors signed official documents that attested to falsehoods. 

However, punishing these relatively low-level offenders is of little importance compared to untangling an interstate conspiracy to overturn a presidential election. Federal investigators want to know what role Trump and his senior advisors played in this scheme. 

Dozens of fake electors are facing serious prison time for signing fake documents and submitting them to the government. If they were tricked, maybe some of them will be willing to tell investigators who tricked them and why. 

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