Georgia GOP Paying for Lawyers Representing ‘Fake Electors’ From Plot to Overturn 2020 Election: Report

Megan Varner/Getty Images

Eleven people in Georgia who were part of a plan to overturn the 2020 election are being represented by attorneys funded by the state’s GOP, according to a report.

Yahoo News reported 16 people were part of a scheme to award their state’s electoral votes to former President Donald Trump as so-called “fake electors.” Numerous battleground states lost by Trump compiled slates of “alternate” electors they wanted considered by former Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6 of last year.

Pence ignored pressure from many within his own party, including from Trump, and certified the results. The scheme failed and now Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis is probing the ill-fated plot in her state.

According to Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman of Yahoo, eleven of the 16 individuals chosen as Georgia’s fake electors are being represented by two attorneys who are being paid by the Georgia Republican Party.

The pair reported:

A Yahoo News review of campaign finance filings shows that the Georgia Republican Party paid $35,419 last July to two lawyers who are representing 11 of 16 party operatives and activists who declared themselves on Dec. 14, 2020, “the duly elected and qualified” electors from the state pledged to Donald Trump despite the fact that Joe Biden had won the popular vote there.

That move, which was memorialized in a false certificate the electors sent that day to the Senate and the National Archives, has become a central focus of Willis’s probe into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Willis has filed a motion to have the attorneys disqualified, arguing there is a conflict of interest.

Isikoff and Klaidman reported:

[Willis] argued that their representation of the 11 electors resulted in ethical conflicts given the potentially divergent interests between some of those electors and top party officials, including state party chairman David Shafer, who organized [a Dec. 14, 2020 meeting to convene the alternate electors.]

Willis is also reportedly concerned 11 potential defendants with the same lawyers might hamper her efforts to flip some of them into implicating Shafer or others.

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