Dozens of local and state Republican leaders who cast fake electoral votes for Donald Trump a year ago may be sentenced to prison.
The House select committee will look into the origins of the scheme to send ballots to Congress from states narrowly won by Joe Biden.
The Democratic attorneys general in two states are calling on the Department of Justice to act.
Josh Kaul, attorney general of Wisconsin, said that it was critical that the federal government fully investigated and prosecuted any seditious conspiracy.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel told reporters earlier this month that calling theelector slate "alternate" did a disservice and that it should be called a crime.
In her state, 16 Republican office holders and party officials filed paperwork claiming that President Trump had won the state even though he had lost it.
The deputy U.S. attorney general confirmed to CNN that the Justice Department prosecutors are looking at those cases.
Georgia, which had 16 Republicans, and Nevada, which had six, were the states with the most false claims of being the state's electors.
The chairman of the Georgia Republican Party said that he and 15 other Georgians sent electoral votes for Trump to make sure that he wouldn't be sued for vote fraud.
He told HuffPost that there was no credible suggestion that there was anything wrong. We did it in the open.
Georgia's would-be GOP electors chose not to include language clarifying that they would only be elected and qualified if a court challenge or other proceeding reversed the outcome there.
Five New Mexico Trump supporters filed a certification that they are the duly elected and qualified electors.
The 20 Republicans in Pennsylvania made it clear that their paperwork was not valid if the election result was reversed.
The proviso was important to the decision not to prosecute the 20.
Trump's lawyers in Georgia told him and his group that any changes to the language they had provided would endanger Trump's legal challenge in state court.
He pointed to an accompanying statement that explained that the GOP slate would only be sent to Congress and the National Archives after the Electoral College vote.
The decision not to include explanations in the actual documents may prove costly if federal prosecutors zero in on the 58 others.
Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor, said that the potential federal crimes include forgery, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to commit fraud and mail fraud because the material was sent to its recipients via the Postal Service. The more serious offenses can lead to 20 years in prison.
He said that the potential penalties could help prosecutors get some of those involved to give information about how the scheme came together. These people should be charged yesterday.
Even as the scheme was unfolding, the source of it was clear. The Trump White House was pushing it, even though it was being promoted by an adviser. On the day of the Electoral College vote, top White House aide Stephen Miller laid it out on a Fox News appearance.
Miller said that an alternate slate of electors in the states that are still undecided will vote and send the results to Congress.
Miller hung up when contacted by HuffPost.
The White House's plan for those slates was made clear in a memo presented to Trump by a lawyer. Vice President Mike Pence couldn't count any of the states that had slates of electors, so he left them out of the total. President Trump was re-elected by a wide margin.
In that period, Trump suggested that he was aware of the alternate slate scheme as he repeatedly urged Pence to abuse his authority as presiding officer during the certification ceremony.
The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors.
Many States want to decertify the mistake they made in certifying incorrect and fraudulent numbers in a process not approved by their State Legislatures.
At his rally that preceded the assault on the Capitol, Trump repeated a false claim that he could give Trump a second term by himself.
He told his followers to come to Washington if Mike Pence does the right thing.
When he began the roll call of states, he made it clear that he was aware of the scheme by modifying the script to ignore the fraudulent pro-Trump certifications.
Instead of asking the tally-keepers to count and make a list of the votes cast by the electors of the several states, as Vice President Biden had instructed four years earlier, Pence told them to.
The fraudulent slates were excluded because only the true electors had such a certificate attached.
Because that day was consumed with the mob assault on the Capitol intended to stop the election certification altogether and was soon followed by Trump's impeachment for inciting it.
When we had a minute to breathe, we said it was pretty damn criminal.
Nessel referred her case to federal prosecutors two weeks ago because it would be easier for them to investigate what appears to be a multi-state conspiracy.
She told reporters that she would prosecute if she had to.
She said that treating the fake certifications as a big deal would send the wrong message.
We can't have people tell me what to do. Look what these 16 individuals did. They were able to get away with it. She said nothing happened to them. We can't have that.
The article was originally on HuffPost.
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