You can add forgery to the list of crimes that Donald "Sore Loser" Trump and his cult followers perpetrated to overturn the 2020 election. Among the huge amount of documents being reviewed by the House Select Committee on January 6 are documents provided by state elections officials, providing an insight into the corrupt attempts to declare Trump the winner despite losing. Two such attempts involve the forging of state documents, namely the "certificates of ascertainment" declaring the winner of Arizona's and Michigan's electoral votes, according to Politico:
"As Trump's team pushed its discredited voter fraud narrative, the National Archives received forged certificates of ascertainment declaring him and then-Vice President Mike Pence the winners of both Michigan and Arizona and their electors after the 2020 election. Public records requests show the secretaries of state for those states sent those certificates to the Jan. 6 panel, along with correspondence between the National Archives and state officials about the documents. [snip]
The National Archives sent emails to the Arizona secretary of state on Dec. 11, 2020, passing along the forged certificates 'for your awareness' and informing the state officials the Archives would not accept them.
Arizona then took legal action against at least one of the groups who sent in the fake documents, sending a cease and desist letter to a pro-Trump 'sovereign citizen' group telling them to stop using the state seal and referring the matter to the state attorney general. [snip]
That group’s leader, Lori Osiecki, had told the Arizona Republic in December 2020 that she decided to send in the certificates after taking part in post-election rallies and after attending a daylong meeting in Phoenix that had included Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
The group that forged the Michigan certification had not used the state seal, and it appears state officials there took no further action after the Archives rejected it." (our emphasis)
Michigan should follow Arizona's example and take some legal action against the forgers, state seal or no state seal. It's fraud. We also wonder whether this loon Osiecki shared her plans to forge the certificate with Rudy "Toot Toot" Giuliani during that daylong meeting in Phoenix, and if so what his reaction was. We're certain the Committee wonders, too.
