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Mark Finchem, the Republican candidate for Arizona Secretary of State, attended an event promoting conspiracy theories about voting machines and counterclaims about the 2020 presidential election at a hotel in West Palm Beach, Fla. .Jim Rassol / AP
This past week, Mark Finchem, the Republican candidate for secretary of state in Arizona, took a lot of time from the campaign to fly to Florida to participate in a meeting of anti-election 2020 and opposition parties. His arrival was no surprise. The QAnon-friendly Finchem, accused of sending an antisemitic tweet and sitting on the floor of the Capitol during the riots of January 6, is one of the main champions of Donald Trump’s Big Lie that stole the vote for him. At the Florida convention, Finchem repeated old accusations that Joe Biden did not win the election in Arizona two years ago, and he mocked his political opponents for calling him a “bad guy .” Finchem said quietly, “I want everyone to follow the law.” Yet his own lawyer was directly involved in the 2020 election campaign for the rule of law.
Several times, Finchem has had to call for legal action since he arrived at the Capitol on January 6. Earlier this year, a voting rights group in Arizona filed a lawsuit to throw him out. per Finchem and GOP Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs of Arizona. election, saying that they were dismissed because of their participation on January 6 and efforts to overthrow the 2020 election. Two weeks ago, Finchem sent a cease and desist letter to Arizona television stations asking them to stop airing a Democratic ad that said he “helped organize the January 6 protests that attacked police.” (Finchem has insisted that he was not involved in the organization of the event. Video footage shows the east side of the Capitol as protesters clash with law enforcement officers.) Each time, the the attorney for Finchem is a Phoenix attorney named Jack Wilenchik.
Wilenchik, also a representative of Cyber Ninjas, the firm that conducted an ineffective, reckless and discredited audit of the 2020 Arizona election count (and subsequently shut it down), tried to stop Finchem to be expelled from the election. Like his client, Wilenchik had a chance to change the 2020 election. His participation in a campaign to keep Trump in power later raised questions about the legitimacy of that action.
In the final weeks of Trump’s presidency — after he lost the election badly — Trump’s allies, including Rudy Giuliani, hatched a plan to compile additional lists of Electoral College voters in the battleground states that supported Trump. These plans are expected to be brought before Congress to sow confusion and prevent Congress from approving the nomination of Joe Biden. This fake election campaign has been the subject of many government and federal investigations.
Wilenchik contributed to this project. A few months ago, New York Times Reporters had access to email messages used by participants in the project, including Wilenchik. The newspaper reported,
The trove of emails between people connected to the Trump campaign, outside advisers and close associates of Mr. he is gone.
Among the emails reviewed by The New York Times and confirmed by people who worked with the Trump campaign at the time, a lawyer involved in detailed discussions that he used the word “fake” to refer to the so-called voters, was told to providing Vice President Mike Pence and Mr. Trump’s friends in Congress have a reason for violating the congressional process of validating the exit. And the lawyers working on the proposal made it clear that they knew the pro-Trump voters they were targeting were unlikely to stand up to legal scrutiny.
“We’ll just give Pence the ‘fake’ electoral votes so that ‘someone’ in Congress can protest when they start counting the votes, and start demanding that the ‘fake’ votes be counted. ‘,” Jack Wilenchik, a Phoenix lawyer who helped organize pro-Trump voters in Arizona, wrote on December 8, 2020, in an email to Boris Epshteyn, a strategic adviser to the Trump campaign.
In a follow-up email, Mr. Wilenchik “probably ‘chosen’ votes over ‘fake’ votes,” adding a smiley face emoji.
The emails suggest that Wilenchik and others knew they were rigging the election ballots to stir up a false controversy that would block the certification of the vote count for Biden.
In a December 8, 2020, email to Epshteyn and several attorneys working on this plan, Wilenchik cited an opinion submitted by Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney who works with John Eastman, a philanthropic attorney and Trump advisor helped lead the fake election campaigns.
He thinks that all of us (GA, WI, AZ, PA, etc.) should let our voters vote (even if the polls aren’t legal under state law—because they don’t signed by the Governor); so that members of Congress can fight if they are counted on January 6th.
It is not legal under the law. This is Wilenchik’s assessment: Fraudulent voters cast illegal ballots. It was designed as a fraud to prevent the ratification of the election and give Trump a chance to retain power.
On the same day, Wilenchik, according to the The seasonsalso sent an email saying that Kelli Ward, a Republican leader and top voter in Arizona who was involved in the fake election scheme, was told to “keep it under wraps until the count Congress in the January 6th election (so we can try to ‘impress’ the Dems and the media with him). He wrote, “I agree with him.” In other words , use “illegal” electoral votes to attack the constitutional order to keep Trump in the White House. That’s what legal lieutenant Finchem is cooking up.
In February, Finchem was subpoenaed by the January 6 committee for his own links to the fraudulent election scheme.
Back to the Florida meeting. Defiantly, Finchem dismissed criticism of his promotion of voter fraud claims and insisted that all he cared about was sticking to the law. But on January 6 he was in the Capitol, sending a tweet during the uproar that showed sympathy for the rioters: “Why do people think they’ve been forgotten, Congress refuses to condone fraud. #stopthesteal.” And he is closely related to Wilenchik, one of the main creators of that attempt to use fake “illegal” votes to overthrow a democratic election. Finchem does not seem to be a traitor to the law. he says.
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