Wisconsin Trump fake elector says fear led him to sign slate – Madison.com
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One of the 10 Republicans who signed an official-looking certificate falsely claiming Donald Trump won the 2020 Wisconsin presidential election said on CBS’ “60 Minutes” that he did so out of fear.
Former Wisconsin Republican Party chair Andrew Hitt told Anderson Cooper that had he not signed the document and a court ruled that the former president won Wisconsin, he feared he would have been the sole reason Republicans wouldn’t have had the paperwork to deliver his win.
“Can you imagine the repercussions on myself, my family, if it was me, Andrew Hitt, who prevented Donald Trump from winning Wisconsin?” Hitt told Anderson Cooper on a “60 Minutes” episode that aired Sunday.
“It was not a safe time,” he said. “If my lawyer is right, and the whole reason Trump loses Wisconsin is because of me, I would be scared to death.”
Hitt said he now feels terrible about the fraudulent scheme, and that he was tricked into participating in it.
The slate of Republican electors gathered at the state Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign documents declaring Trump the winner on the same day Democratic electors cast the state’s actual Electoral College votes for Joe Biden.
Documents have underscored efforts by those in Trump’s inner circle to circumvent the Electoral College process in several states, including Wisconsin, after the 2020 election, despite recounts and court decisions affirming that Biden defeated Trump in the battleground state by almost 21,000 votes.
Hitt and the nine other Republican electors settled a civil lawsuit in December regarding the scheme. As part of the settlement they acknowledged President Joe Biden won the election and admitted their actions furthered a scheme to illegally overturn the election.
As the 2024 presidential election kicks off, Hitt said he didn’t think Trump would be a good president for the country.
“We need a leader who … tackles serious problems and serious issues that this country faces,” he said on “60 Minutes.” “And we need faith in our institutions again. And the next president of the United States needs to do that.”
Asked whether that person could be Trump, Hitt said, “That is not him.”
While a handful of voters in 2020 risked going to prison by attempting to vote twice or in the name of a dead relative, as happens in any election, no evidence of widespread fraud has ever been produced in Wisconsin or elsewhere. Yet, many continue to question some of the practices clerks relied on to encourage eligible voters to cast ballots and make sure their votes were counted amid the first election in more than 100 years held during a pandemic. Here’s what happened, and didn’t happen.
The state has multiple, overlapping safeguards aimed at preventing ineligible voters from casting ballots, tampering with the ballots or altering vote totals.
Nothing in the emails suggests there were problems with the election that contributed in any meaningful way to Trump’s 20,682-vote loss to Joe Biden.
“Despite concerns with statewide elections procedures, this audit showed us that the election was largely safe and secure,” Sen. Rob Cowles said Friday.
The grants were provided to every Wisconsin municipality that asked for them, and in the amounts they asked for.
“Application of the U.S. Department of Justice guidance among the clerks in Wisconsin is not uniform,” the memo says.
YORKVILLE — The Racine County Sheriff’s Office announced in a Thursday morning news conference that it has identified eight cases of what it believes to be election fraud at a Mount Pleasant nursing home.
The memo states that state law gives the Audit Bureau complete access to all records during an audit investigation and federal law and guidance does not prohibit an election official from handing over election records.
Drop boxes were used throughout Wisconsin, including in areas where Trump won the vast majority of counties.
Thousands of ballot certifications examined from Madison are a window onto how elections officials handled a pandemic and a divided and unhelpful state government.
“I don’t think that you instill confidence in a process by kind of blindly assuming there’s nothing to see here,” WILL president and general counsel Rick Esenberg said.
The Associated Press reviewed every potential case of voter fraud in six battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvan…
The report is the latest to show that there was not widespread fraud in Wisconsin.
The clear insinuation was that someone not qualified to conduct an election improperly influenced these vulnerable voters. But the Wisconsin State Journal could not confirm the data.
The turnout at nursing homes in Brown, Kenosha, Milwaukee and Racine counties in 2020 was not much different from the turnout in 2016.
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