About
Sixteen Republican residents of Georgia attempted to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election by submitting fake Electoral College documents to Congress as part of the Jan. 6, 2021 certification process.
The group includes two Georgia state senators—one who went on to be a candidate for lieutenant governor in 2022 and won—as well as the chair of the Georgia Republican Party. Two of the fake electors were subpoenaed by the Department of Justice for their roles in the scheme, and 11 of the fake electors were notified that they are targets of an investigation by Georgia prosecutors. As of October 2023, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had charged three of the fake electors (Latham, Shafer, and Still) as part of her 19-person RICO indictment.
According to the Georgia Recorder, the 16 fake electors gathered in the Georgia state capitol on Dec. 14, 2020 and mailed signed, notarized certificates to Congress and the National Archives purporting to be official Electoral College votes for Trump.
Politico reported that on Dec. 13, 2020, Christina Bobb, then a One America News anchor and subsequently a legal representative for the former president, briefed a group of Trump’s lawyers on the scheme.
The Big Lie
- The following 16 fake electors from Georgia signed bogus documents claiming that Trump had won the 2020 election in their state:
- Mark Amick: a member of the board of governors for the Georgia Republican Foundation. He claimed that he saw more than 9,000 votes incorrectly awarded to Joe Biden during the first Georgia recount.
- Joseph Brannan: treasurer of the Georgia Republican Party
- James “Ken” Carroll: assistant secretary for the Georgia Republican Party
- Brad Carver: a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association who was subsequently subpoenaed by the Department of Justice
- Vikki Townsend Consiglio: assistant treasurer for the Georgia Republican Party and a member of the board of governors for the Georgia Republican Foundation
- John Downey: a former House district chair for the Cobb County Republican Party
- Carolyn Hall Fisher: a former first vice chairman for the Georgia Republican Party
- Gloria Kay Godwin: co-founder of Georgia Conservatives in Action. She was accused of stalking after allegedly attempting to interfere with a citizen effort to obtain signatures for a recall election petition for her grandson.
- David G. Hanna: co-founder and former CEO of a financial holding company
- Mark W. Hennessy: CEO of several car dealerships in the Atlanta area
- Burt Jones: a Georgia state senator who won election as lieutenant governor in 2022 with Trump’s endorsement
- Cathleen Alston Latham: a teacher at the Georgia Virtual School who was chair of the Coffee County Republican Party. The day after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, she was working at the county elections office, where she “welcomed a computer forensics team that arrived to copy software and data from the county’s election equipment in what the secretary of state’s office has said was ‘unauthorized access’ to the machines.” As a result, Attorney General Willis has indicted Latham on charges of breaking the law and conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
- Daryl Moody: chairman of the Georgia Republican Foundation
- David Shafer: chairman of the state GOP, a Georgia state senator, and an American Legislative Exchange Council member. He was subsequently subpoenaed by the Department of Justice and has been indicted by the Fulton County attorney general on charges of breaking the law and conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
- Shawn Still: former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party Finance Committee, a 2022 candidate for Georgia state senate and one of 19 co-conspirators indicted by the Fulton County attorney general on charges of breaking the law and conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
- C.B. Yadav: a member of the Georgians First Commission
- Four other individuals originally intended to act as fake electors but were ultimately replaced:
- Patrick Gartland: a former Republican representative on the board of elections
- Susan Holmes: A member of the Georgia House of Representatives and former mayor of Monticello, Georgia
- John A. Isakson: CFO of Preferred Apartment Communities and the son of Johnny Isakson, a former U.S. Senator and former member of the House of Representatives
- CJ Pearson: former executive director of Young Georgians in Government and Teens for Trump