January 6 committee subpoenas individuals tied to fake elector push

(CNN)The January 6 Select Committee has issued subpoenas for 14 Republicans from seven states who served on bogus slates of Trump electors in 2020 as part of the Trump campaign's scheme to subvert the Electoral College.

The GOP leaders from the states served as "Chair" and "Secretary" on the slates of fake electors designed to be alternates should Republicans succeed in denying the certifications of the actual electoral votes that were won by Joe Biden.

The scheme didn't work, and then-Vice President Mike Pence certified the election results on January 6 when the congressional session reconvened after being interrupted by a mob of pro-Trump rioters.

"The Select Committee is seeking information about attempts in multiple states to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including the planning and coordination of efforts to send false slates of electors to the National Archives" said Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the committee, of this batch of subpoenas. "We believe the individuals we have subpoenaed today have information about how these so-called alternate electors met and who was behind that scheme."

In its subpoena letters, the panel says it has in its possession these fake elector certificates from the National Archives. The committee also says it has documentation showing that these delegations sent the bogus electors to Congress "as a justification to delay or block the certification of the election" and specifically for Pence to consider while in his role as President of the Senate when he certified the 2020 presidential election. The panel received all 700-plus pages from the National Archives last week that were previously tied up in litigation after the Supreme Court ruled that former President Donald Trump could not block the panel from receiving them.

The committee subpoenaed the following chairperson and secretary of each group of so-called alternate electors. Each state pair is listed as chairperson and secretary respectively:

Nancy Cottle and Loraine Pellegrino from Arizona. Cottle is listed on the Arizona Federation of Republican Women's website as being the group's vice president.
David Shafer and Shawn Still from Georgia. Shafer is the chair of the Georgia GOP and was a plaintiff in some of Trump's longshot lawsuits to overturn the election in Georgia. Still was the Georgia GOP's finance chair and is now running for a Georgia Senate seat.