The Arizona Republican Party has selected Sen. Jake Hoffman, a “fake voter” who was indicted last week and accused of his efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Arizona, as a national committeeman for the Republican National Committee.
Hoffman — who was indicted Wednesday along with 17 other people, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani — was elected to the RNC post along with former state Rep. Liz Harris, who was expelled in connection with it reasons. to cast doubt on Biden’s 2020 victory in Arizona.
“I am humbled and honored to have been selected as the next RNC National Committeeman for Arizona,” Hoffman wrote on X on Saturday evening.
“The road to saving America runs through our great state, and the RNC has a critical role to play in supporting and strengthening the Republican base that fights the Democratic Fascists every day,” Hoffman added.
On January 5, 2021, Hoffman, who was then days away from becoming a state representative, sent a letter urging Vice President Mike Pence to delay the counting of Arizona’s electors and to “seek clarification from the Arizona Legislature as to which list of electors was true and accurate.” Hoffman himself was one of eleven ‘alternate voters’.
Announcing the charges against Hoffman and others accused of involvement in the scheme, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said in a recorded video released Wednesday: “These defendants… of Arizona deceived.”
“The defendants intended that the false votes for Trump and Pence would encourage Vice President Pence to reject the votes of the certified Biden-Harris electors, regardless of the outcome of any legal challenge,” she added.
Along with Hoffman, the Arizona GOP also selected former state Rep. Liz Harris as a national committee member. Harris was expelled from the Legislature a year ago after she invited an election denier to give testimony laced with unsubstantiated accusations during a televised parliamentary hearing on elections.
Jacqueline Breger, an insurance agent invited by Harris to testify, claimed without evidence that a Mexican drug cartel bribed Governor Katie Hobbs and Republican House Speaker Ben Toma and that “bribes and infiltration were used to influence the outcome of 2020 and 2022.” elections.
During the controversial hearing on February 23, 2023, Breger claimed that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints “has the power[s]’government agencies and was ‘an integral part of the money laundering activities’.
An Arizona ethics panel report found that Harris “committed disorderly conduct” and damaged “the institutional integrity of the House” by inviting Breger. Harris was removed from office after 46 of the 60 members of the Republican-controlled House voted to expel her following the release of the ethics panel’s report.
“These are not just run-of-the-mill election deniers,” Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist in Arizona, said of Hoffman and Harris. “They are leaders in the whole experiment of election denial.”
Marson said he believes the new performances from Hoffman and Harris are indicative of the transformation of the Arizona GOP in recent years.
“I think it shows that both election denial and allegiance to election denial is now the state Republican Party in Arizona,” he said.
The Arizona GOP did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the selections of Hoffman and Harris.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
