ATLANTA — The 2020 plan to send a false set of electors to Washington, DC to vote for former President Donald Trump is back in the spotlight.
Sources confirm to Channel 2 Action News that the Trump campaign asked Georgia Republicans to keep the meeting of those false electors at the state capitol a secret.
Channel 2′s Richard Elliot was at the State Capitol that day where the fake electors met while official Democratic electors were meeting just upstairs.
Channel 2 Action News had no prior knowledge of the meeting, and it was only because Elliot was there for the official elector ceremony that he witnessed it.
No one tried to stop Elliot from going inside the secret meeting that day.
There he found Georgia GOP Chair David Shafer and other “alternate” electors casting their votes for Donald Trump.
Among those alternate electors was current GOP nominee for Lt. Governor, Burt Jones.
Sources at that meeting now confirm that the Trump campaign sent out an email asking attendees to keep the meeting quiet and to say instead they were meeting with Jones and state Sen. Brandon Beach.
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At the time, Elliot asked Shafer about why they kept it so quiet.
“I mean, I arrived at noon. When, I mean, it’s in the law that the electors are required to meet at noon, and we have the contest pending that has not been decided,” Shafer said.
Shafer also said at the time they named the alternate electors so that Trump’s lawsuit against Fulton County could continue.
Elliot contacted Jones’ campaign and got this statement, saying:
“We’re focused on fixing the mess of skyrocketing inflation, record high gas prices, mass illegal immigration and general incompetence, not relitigating 2020.”
The Jan. 6 Commission is investigating the alternate electors meeting and it’s possibly part of the Fulton County special grand jury’s investigation into potential criminal interference in Georgia’s election.
Channel 2 political analyst Bill Crane doesn’t think the alternate electors meeting was itself illegal, but he says, it didn’t look good.
“I would say it’s more unseemly, and another layer of the onion that is the attempt to overturn the results of the will of the people in the November 2020 Georgia election,” Crane said.
Elliot tried to contact Shafer, Trump’s lawyer in Georgia and others Tuesday, but didn’t get a response.
While Elliot’s source did confirm the email asking them to keep the meeting quiet, they also pointed out that the meeting was open to the press, and they insisted they weren’t trying to hide anything.
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