Collapse of 'Fake Electors' Narrative Shows Why Anti-Weaponization Fund is Necessary

The so-called “fake electors” narrative has finally collapsed under the weight of its own fabrication.

The so-called “fake electors” narrative has finally collapsed under the weight of its own fabrication. One by one, the cases built by Democratic attorneys general against Republican alternate electors from the 2020 election have crumbled. The most recent example came in Nevada, where Clark County District Judge Mary Kay Holthus dismissed forgery and false-document charges against the six Republican electors, including state GOP Chair Michael McDonald. The judge found no evidence they intended to deceive officials. They had openly announced their purpose, and the certificates they signed could not be legally accepted under Nevada or federal law. Prosecutors’ claims of secret fraud evaporated the moment a court examined them.

The pattern is now unmistakable. In Michigan, a judge appointed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer dismissed all charges against 15 alternate electors in September 2025, ruling that prosecutors failed to prove specific intent to defraud. The electors were exercising their constitutional right to seek redress—posing for a photograph and testifying under oath that they genuinely believed the election was stolen—actions inconsistent with perpetrating a criminal conspiracy. In Arizona, Attorney General Kris Mayes’s sprawling indictment against 18 defendants, including Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, Christina Bobb, and John Eastman, has been repeatedly rebuked. A trial judge found that prosecutors misled the grand jury by withholding the Electoral Count Act; an appeals court refused to revive the case; and the Arizona Supreme Court shut the door. AG Mayes now scrambles for a new grand jury, a desperate admission that the original case was improper. Similarly, the case against alternative electors in Georgia was dismissed last year as well in a blow to the disgraced low IQ Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

These cases were never about enforcing the rule of law. They were poorly constructed political theatre, assembled years after the fact by Democratic AGs who coordinated their efforts with far-left nonprofits. Norm Eisen’s States United Democracy Center supplied the blueprints, Marc Elias’s lawfare operation provided legal cover, and the Democratic Attorneys General Association funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to boost the prosecution strategy as it was being crafted. What looked like independent state actions was actually a national scheme designed to criminalize political opposition. Yet the most damning part of the story is not the collapse of the cases. It is how ordinary the alternate-elector strategy was portrayed before Democrats decided to retcon it as a crime.

In the fall of 2020, major news outlets treated the possibility of “dueling electors” as a serious contingency, not a conspiracy. Reuters published an explainer on how competing slates in battleground states with split partisan control of governors and legislatures could deadlock the Electoral College, citing the historical precedent of 1876. An election guide posted by Politico casually walked through Republican operatives discussing alternate electors if Trump lost and claimed fraud, and Democratic governors responding with their own slates. No one called it sedition. It was framed as a constitutional stress test.

Even more striking was the war game played by the so-called Transition Integrity Project. Former White House Chief of Staff and pizza party aficionado John Podesta, playing the role of Joe Biden, refused to concede a narrow electoral defeat. He alleged voter suppression and persuaded the governors of Wisconsin and Michigan to send pro-Biden electors to the Electoral College. The New York Times reported the exercise without even an inkling of moral panic. It was treated as a genuine possibility that could come from either side of the political aisle in the case of a close or disputed election, not as some nefarious plot to overthrow the government.

Then after a disputed election marked by late-night ballot dumps, statistical anomalies, rule violations, and widespread distrust, Republican electors in several states signed contingent certificates to preserve their legal options if courts or legislatures later found the results invalid. They did not hide. They did not claim the certificates were the official ones. They acted in the open—doing everything in their power to draw attention to their efforts in the midst of a media blackout shuttering all fraud claims—consistent with historical precedent. For years, almost no one cared. The narrative only hardened into “fake electors” and “attempted coup” after the call came down from the permanent bureaucracy and progressive legal networks that President Trump and his supporters had to be destroyed.

What followed was lawfare at its worst. Democratic attorneys general in Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and elsewhere dusted off obscure statutes and stretched them into felony charges that carried the threat of decades in prison. Ordinary citizens—many of them senior citizens, small-business owners, and longtime party activists—were indicted for the “crime” of believing the 2020 election was stolen and trying to keep legal options open. The goal was never primarily conviction. It was destruction: bankrupting defendants with hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, terrifying them with federal scrutiny, isolating them from family and friends who bought into the media narrative, and sending a chilling message to every election-integrity activist in the Republican Party. The message was clear: challenge the official story and we will ruin your life.

These patriots endured more than most Americans will ever face from their own government. They lost homes. They watched savings evaporate. They were treated as domestic terrorists for the same contingency planning that elite Democrats had discussed openly months earlier. The most powerful institutions in the country—Democratic state AGs, progressive dark-money groups, the national media, and deep state operators—trained their fire on private citizens whose only offense was loyalty to a candidate despised by the establishment. Miscarriage of justice does not begin to describe it. This was an abuse seemingly right out of the People’s Court of the Soviet Union.

The alternate electors have been effectively vindicated. The charges have been dismissed or are collapsing. President Trump issued federal pardons to 77 alternate electors and associated figures. Now the victims are going on offense. In Michigan, former defendants have filed notice of their intent to sue Attorney General Dana Nessel for malicious prosecution, seeking millions in damages and personal accountability. They are right to do so. Officials who weaponize criminal law against their political opponents must pay a steep price, or the practice will continue unabated.

This is why President Trump must revive the Anti-Weaponization Fund, a brilliant idea that has unfortunately been shuttered due to political calculations. RINO Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis received assurances from Attorney General Todd Blanche that the Anti-Weaponization Fund was dead to secure votes for his confirmation. The senators extracted a formal order terminating the fund and narrowing the related IRS settlement. Perhaps after Blanche is settled into his role, he can issue another formal letter changing his mind. Tillis and Cornyn will be out of the U.S. Senate soon anyway, and their voices are not needed to sustain MAGA’s governing coalition. In other words: Screw ‘em.

The patriots who stood in the breach after 2020 and absorbed the full force of unprecedented lawfare deserve more than symbolic vindication. They deserve substantial compensation that makes clear the government will not escape consequences for political persecution. Elections have consequences. Restoring the lives of those who were bankrupted, isolated, and terrorized for defending election integrity should be chief among those consequences. The Anti-Weaponization Fund must be revived, and dramatic payouts must be made. Anything less continues the injustice, and as the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Let’s remedy this injustice, and make the Anti-Weaponization Fund great again.