Democrats gleeful over the mass indictments of former President Donald Trump and 18 others for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election may want to hit the pause button on their joy.
As The Epoch Times reported on Sunday, a transcript of a meeting of the supposed “alternate electors” supporting Trump actually got the idea from Democrats.
The group met with a lawyer for Trump, Ray Smith, on Dec. 14, 2020. Smith sought to coach them in how to challenge the results in Georgia, where Trump lost by 11,799 votes.
“We’re going to conduct this in accordance with the Constitution of the United States, so we’re going to conduct the electorate today similar to what happened in 1960 in Hawaii,” Smith told the group, according to the transcript.
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“We’re conducting this because the contest of the election in Georgia is ongoing. And so we continue to contest the election of the electors in Georgia.”
The meeting with Smith was held the day Georgia would certify its election, and retain then-candidate Joe Biden’s lead.
The idea, the Times reported, was for Smith and David Shafer, former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, to get Trump’s backers on the record voting for him as the next president in case his legal challenge to the election results, which had not even been before a judge at the time, prevailed.
As noted in Smith’s comment to the group, they got the idea from fans of former Democratic President John F. Kennedy.
As the Times reported, Kennedy defeated Republican Vice President Richard Nixon in Hawaii by 115 votes. After a recount, which both parties wanted, Nixon emerged with a 141-vote lead.
As in Georgia three years ago, the Hawaii election result was challenged in court and still pending as the deadline for certifying the outcome approached.
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Accordingly, the Times noted, “both the official Republican slate of electors and the contingent Democrat slate of electors cast their votes.”
On Jan. 6, 1961, Nixon presented both slates of electoral votes and then certified his own defeat to Kennedy.
“In order not to delay the further count of the electoral vote here, the Chair, without the intent of establishing a precedent, suggests that the electors named in the certificate of the Governor of Hawaii dated January 4, 1961, be considered as the lawful electors from the State of Hawaii,” said Nixon in requesting that the Democratic votes for Kennedy be counted as the official result. The Senate unanimously agreed to do so.
The transcript of the pro-Trump contingent in Georgia revealed that Shafer, with Smith’s confirmation, argued the “only way” for the GOP electors to make Trump’s case was that they had to vote as an alternate set. Otherwise, they would be viewed as having abandoned their challenge to the outcome.
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