Former President Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday on multiple federal charges connected to his criminal schemes to keep himself in power after losing the 2020 election, which culminated in a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters. At this historic moment, it is also worth reexamining the public role that Fox News played in promoting one of Trump’s key efforts to stay in power — and which is now the central crime in the indictment — by creating fake Electoral College votes in states where Joe Biden had won the popular vote.
The August 1 indictment charges Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States, and details the manner in which he and six unnamed co-conspirators manufactured the fake electoral votes. This scheme essentially involved a bait-and-switch, at first justifying the fake elector slates as a contingency plan in case a recount or court case were to flip a state’s election result in his favor, in line with a historical precedent from Hawaii’s presidential recount in 1960. However, even after no such results were flipped — indeed, Trump lost a state recount as well as dozens of legal challenges — he and his co-conspirators still attempted to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence to treat the fake electors as if they were real, and to reject the certification of real electoral votes for Biden.
The indictment also charges Trump with obstructing an official proceeding (the counting of the electoral votes on January 6, 2021) and engaging in a conspiracy against Americans’ civil rights to have their votes counted, based on his refusal to immediately tell his supporters to leave the Capitol, and that he and co-conspirators sought to use the violence as a means to further delay the electoral count. These further counts, in a sense, simply stem further out from the fraudulent electors scheme itself.
Two weeks ago, on July 18, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced state charges against the 16 fake Trump electors in her state, on counts of forgery punishable by up to 14 years in prison. In addition, the Trump campaign’s fake electors in Georgia could also face charges in the ongoing probe by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis of Trump’s efforts to subvert his election loss in that state. Eight of Georgia’s fake electors have already accepted an immunity deal, indicating that they could potentially provide evidence against other figures in the Trump campaign.
Fox News played a major role in promoting the fake electors conspiracy at the time, including hosting the major public announcement of the scheme on the morning of December 14, 2020, the day when the Electoral College delegates voted across the country. Fox hosts and guests repeatedly invoked Trump’s false claim that Congress or the vice president could simply treat the fake electoral votes as real ones, or that they presented some legitimate rival claim despite not having the certification of any state authority.