New Mexico

Prosecutors: No evidence of intent by N.M.’s fake electors – Source New Mexico

Published

2 years ago

January 19, 2024

Prosecutors: No evidence of intent by N.M.’s fake electors – Source New Mexico

At noon on Dec. 14, 2020, New Mexico’s five presidential electors met in a committee room on the third floor of the New Mexico State Capitol in Santa Fe to cast the electoral college votes for Joe Biden, who won the state by more than 100,000 votes.

At the same time, the five Republican elector nominees met downstairs in the east lobby at the Roundhouse to hold their own “mirror image” meeting to cast their electoral votes for Donald Trump.

Details about the meeting were presented to lawmakers on Wednesday. Sean Sullivan, a New Mexico Department of Justice prosecutor who was later assigned to investigate, said four of the original fake electors attended the meeting: Jewll Powdrell, Deborah W. Maestas, Lupe Garcia, and Rosie Tripp.

Harvey Yates was originally nominated as a fifth GOP elector, but he wasn’t in the state at the time, so the rest of the group instead nominated Anissa Ford-Tinnin, who was the New Mexico Republican Party’s executive director, Sullivan said.

Also present at the meeting were incoming state GOP executive director Nike Kern (who recorded the meeting on video with her phone) and her husband John Kern. That video, Sullivan said, demonstrates the fake electors were “rather unprepared and unfamiliar with the process.”

Powdrell chaired the meeting, and could be seen frequently looking off-camera and taking cues from John Kern, who “had nothing to do with this, he happened to be a lawyer and adept at paperwork,” Sullivan said.

Legitimate presidential electors certify who their votes for president and vice president are going to be by signing what is called a certificate of votes, Sullivan said.

The fake electors signed a certificate of votes saying they were only certifying the electoral votes if they were determined later to be the valid electors for those states, he said.

“We the undersigned, on the understanding that it might later be determined that we are duly elected and qualified electors,” the document begins. Kern and her husband later sent it to the National Archives and former vice president Mike Pence in his capacity in the U.S. Senate, Sullivan said.

“No one there had a very clear sense of what it is they were supposed to be doing, and why it is they were supposed to be doing it,” Sullivan said.

What the Republican electors also didn’t know, Sullivan said, was that in Pennsylvania, GOP electors and their state party chairman felt uncomfortable about signing something holding themselves out as the legitimate electors, when in fact Trump lost the popular vote in that state, too.

According to Sullivan’s summary of his investigation presented to state lawmakers:

To alleviate those concerns, Pennsylvania’s Republican elector nominees on Dec. 12, 2020 spoke with Trump lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Rudy Giuliani, who falsely assured them the certificates would only be used if the campaign won their lawsuit to overturn the results.

Despite those assurances, Chesebro wrote an email later that night to other attorneys in the Trump campaign suggesting they should use conditional language in their document.

“It strikes me that if inserting these few words is a good idea for (Pennsylvania), it might be worth suggesting to electors in other states,” Chesebro wrote. Four or five hours later, he sent another email to Trump campaign lawyers Mike Roman and Joshua Finley providing them with the documents that would be used by New Mexico’s fake electors, without any edits.

Roman forwarded those documents to Thomas Lane, who was the Trump campaign’s executive election day operation director for New Mexico. Lane then forwarded them on to New Mexico’s fake electors at 3:40 p.m. on Dec. 13, 2020.

“New Mexico’s fake electors had no knowledge of the Pennsylvania developments,” Sullivan said. “They were simply presented with a draft certificate that had already had those changes made.”

Last chance before presidential election

This gap in knowledge is crucial to the New Mexico Department of Justice’s decision not to charge anyone involved in the 2020 fake presidential elector scheme, and now New Mexico’s top prosecutor is asking the state’s legislature to change election law in order to prevent it from happening again.

First, Attorney General Raúl Torrez wants lawmakers to amend the crime of falsifying election documents to prohibit someone from knowingly falsifying an election document without the additional requirement of an intent to deceive or mislead, and to include a wider range of election documents explicitly protected by the law.

Second, he wants legislators to create a new crime of falsely acting as a presidential elector like the one passed by the Nevada Legislature but vetoed by its governor, and explicitly prohibit anyone from escaping criminal liability by using conditional language similar to what was used by New Mexico’s fake electors.

Sullivan, Torrez and New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver presented the new information during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on Wednesday.

Sen. Joseph Cervantes (D-Las Cruces), who heads the committee, said this session is the last time lawmakers will have an opportunity to make any changes to state law before the next presidential election in November.

Cervantes said he wants Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to put the legislation on the call so that lawmakers can consider it in the short session. Torrez said he has identified “a potential sponsor” in the House of Representatives, but did not name them.

‘These individuals cannot be charged with the crime’

The New Mexico Department of Justice looked at the state’s criminal and election laws to figure whether the fake electors, the state Republican Party, or members of Trump’s team and campaign committed a crime when they drafted, signed and sent the false certificate of votes.

Nothing in the state’s election laws apply to their conduct, according to the department’s final report on its investigation of New Mexico’s false electoral votes in the 2020 presidential election.

The crime of forgery is what “most closely aligns with the conduct of the fake electors,” according to state officials. Authorities in Georgia, Michigan and Nevada charged their fake electors with that crime.

But after two years of investigation, the New Mexico Department of Justice found the fake electors’ actions only met two of the three elements needed to prove forgery beyond a reasonable doubt.

Forgery in New Mexico must include: (1) falsely making or altering a signature on, or any part of, a written document, (2) the document claims to be legally valid and (3) the person acted with the intent to injure or defraud.

New Mexico’s fake electors met the first two elements but not the third.

The fake electors received and signed a document with language indicating they were not, at the time, New Mexico’s legitimate presidential electors.

Two days earlier on Dec. 12, 2020 at 9:39 p.m., Ford-Tinnin texted with Lane to discuss an impending lawsuit the campaign would file in New Mexico challenging what they perceived to be voting irregularities, Sullivan said.

According to the final report, the fake electors knew the lawsuit would be filed soon after they signed the certificate of votes, and Lane told Ford-Tinnin the certificate would only be used if they won.

“The totality of the evidence does not establish that the fake electors intended to deceive the President of the Senate into thinking that they were the actual electors from New Mexico and using their votes in place of New Mexico’s actual electors without a court ruling overturning the election results,” the department wrote. “Because proof of an essential element of forgery is missing, these individuals cannot be charged with the crime.”

In interviews with state prosecutors, the fake electors said they participated in the scheme to submit placeholder or contingent votes to be counted only if the election results were lawfully changed as a result of Trump’s lawsuit, Sullivan said.

Ford-Tinnin said the electoral votes “weren’t worth the paper they were written on,” because to her knowledge they hadn’t been filed anywhere, Sullivan said investigators found.

Kern described the certificate they signed as an “insurance policy,” he said. Maestas, Tripp, Powdrell and Garcia believed the certificate would only be operative if the lawsuit succeeded, he said.

New Mexico Republican Party chairman Steve Pearce told investigators the electoral votes served a preservation purpose, and they needed to vote on a specific day so if they were successful later on, they had the votes in place, Sullivan said.

“Those statements were corroborated by other documents that we reviewed that took place close in time or contemporaneously with when they were voting,” Sullivan said. “We’re not just taking folks’ word at face value.”

While there was a scheme at the national level to overturn the 2020 election results, New Mexico Department of Justice investigators wrote, it did not extend to New Mexico because the certificate signed by the fake electors contained the conditional language about Trump’s lawsuit.

By contrast, in five other states, Trump’s team and campaign sent draft certificates of votes to Republican Party executives which declared the fake electors to be the legitimate ones.

If a document like that had been sent to New Mexico GOP party executives or the fake electors, the people responsible “may have been guilty of solicitation of forgery under New Mexico law” because they would have been asking the fake electors to submit a false certificate with fraudulent intent, New Mexico Department of Justice investigators wrote.

Read the entire report from the New Mexico Department of Justice:

FE-Final-Report

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New Mexico

Opinion: Applauding Heinrich for bi-partisan permitting reform work – New Mexico Political Report

Published

4 hours ago

May 10, 2026

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Opinion: Applauding Heinrich for bi-partisan permitting reform work – New Mexico Political Report

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New Mexico

New Mexico lawmakers, leaders respond to federal lawsuit

Published

16 hours ago

May 10, 2026

Press Room

New Mexico lawmakers, leaders respond to federal lawsuit

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — State lawmakers and leaders released the following statements in response to the federal lawsuit against New Mexico and the City of Albuquerque.

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez

“House Bill 9 is a constitutional exercise of state authority, and this office will defend it.

The New Mexico Legislature passed this law after extensive consideration of documented harms occurring in immigration detention facilities operating in this state — inadequate medical care, deaths in custody, and conditions that fell well below acceptable standards. The Legislature made a considered judgment that New Mexico’s government, its employees, and its publicly funded facilities should not be instruments of a detention system that has caused serious and preventable harm to people held within our borders. That is precisely the kind of policy judgment that belongs to the states.

The Constitution reserves to the states the power to govern their own affairs — including how state and local personnel are deployed and how publicly funded facilities are used. Federal agents remain free to enforce federal immigration law. They may make arrests, conduct investigations, and carry out removals. What they may not do is compel New Mexico’s officers, employees, and institutions to administer federal enforcement priorities the state has chosen not to adopt. The federal government has its own personnel and its own resources. It does not have a constitutional right to New Mexico’s.

This lawsuit asks a federal court to override a democratically enacted state law because the administration disagrees with the policy choice the Legislature made. That is not a constitutional argument. It is an attempt to use federal litigation to reverse an outcome the administration dislikes. We will see them in court.”

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller

“I will always stand up for the safety, rights, and dignity of Albuquerque residents. Our policies ensure ALL families can call 911, send their kids to school, and access City services without fear, while making clear that City resources are not tools for federal immigration raids. We are ready to defend our community, our values, and our public safety in court,”

City Councilor Dan Lewis

“Mayor Keller deserves to be sued for his reckless promotion of dangerous sanctuary policies that undermine cooperation between law enforcement agencies and put everyone at risk. Sanctuary laws don’t protect; they create more victims. I opposed Keller’s so-called ‘Safer Community Places’ ordinance from the beginning. It’s nothing more than obstruction of law enforcement and this mayor chose his radical ideology over public safety. Most people in our City agree that there is a public safety benefit when local, state and federal law enforcement work together to enforce the law and protect innocent people.”

Deb Haaland

“As ICE continues threatening communities across the country, the state is the first line of defense against the Trump administration. In New Mexico, we are lucky that the state and localities worked to lawfully pass legislation to protect New Mexicans and their families from ICE. We can’t let the federal government continue to exert their will on New Mexico and we won’t let them intimidate us. We are a multicultural state, we must stand strong with our neighbors. That means as governor, I will do anything in my power to stop ICE from tearing families apart and committing crimes in our streets while advocating for strong, common sense immigration and border security reform.”

The Democratic Party of New Mexico

“The Immigrant Safety Act passed both legislative chambers and was signed into law constitutionally, within our rights as a state, concerning New Mexico’s own personnel, facilities, and resources. The Trump Administration may not like that New Mexico stands for the safety of all the families in our communities and against inhumane and dangerous conditions in for-profit detention centers, but they have to respect our rights as a state.

The fact of the matter is that the Trump Administration is overstepping its authority as they continue to force a violent, clumsy immigration agenda onto communities it has terrorized across the country against their will.”

Republican Party of New Mexico

“The lawsuit filed by the United States against the State of New Mexico, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, Attorney General Raul Torrez, the City of Albuquerque, and Mayor Timothy Keller confirms what many New Mexicans have feared for months — that House Bill 9 and Albuquerque’s Safer Community Places Ordinance were driven by partisan politics rather than the safety, stability, and economic well-being of our communities.

Legislators who pushed HB9 chose political ideology over common sense and over the people they were elected to represent. This legislation appears to have been crafted not to improve public safety or immigration outcomes, but to advance an anti-Trump political agenda at any cost. In doing so, they ignored the serious consequences these policies would have on New Mexico families, local economies, county governments, and the very immigrants they claim to protect.

The federal government’s complaint makes clear that these laws threaten decades-long partnerships between local governments and federal authorities that have been essential to maintaining public safety and enforcing immigration law. These partnerships support jobs, economic activity, and critical infrastructure in communities like Otero County, where nearly 300 jobs are now at risk because of these reckless political decisions.

New Mexico legislators also failed to consider the financial burden these measures place on counties and municipalities already struggling with limited resources. Instead of working collaboratively to address immigration challenges responsibly and humanely, they chose confrontation and obstruction.

Most troubling is the complete disregard for the safety of New Mexicans. Policies that intentionally interfere with federal immigration enforcement risk creating greater instability, undermining law enforcement cooperation, and putting thousands of residents at risk. At the same time, these policies do nothing to improve the care, processing, or long-term outcomes for immigrants being housed in detention and processing facilities.

The people of New Mexico deserve leadership focused on public safety, economic security, and lawful solutions — not political theater designed to score partisan points. When elected officials prioritize ideology over citizens, communities suffer. The consequences of HB9 and related sanctuary-style policies are now being challenged in federal court, and New Mexicans are left to deal with the damage caused by leaders who appeared more interested in opposing President Trump than protecting the people of this state.

And now, after advancing policies that threaten jobs, hurt counties financially, undermine law enforcement cooperation, and divide communities, these same legislators want taxpayers to pay them for their failing policies. Instead of moving New Mexico forward, too many elected officials have focused solely on advancing their own political agendas while ignoring the real needs of working families, local governments, and public safety.

This election season, New Mexicans have an opportunity to speak loudly at the polls. The primary elections matter, and voters must carefully choose strong Republican candidates willing to go to Santa Fe and fight against harmful policies that put politics above people. New Mexico deserves leaders who will protect communities, strengthen the economy, support law enforcement, and put citizens first — not politicians who continue to gamble with the future of this state.”

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New Mexico

Phoebe Bridgers Debuts New Music at First Show in Three Years

Published

1 day ago

May 9, 2026

Press Room

Phoebe Bridgers Debuts New Music at First Show in Three Years

Phoebe Bridgers played her first solo show in three years on Friday night at The Liberty in Roswell, New Mexico. And if reports are to be believed, the singer’s next album/creative era could truly be out of this world.

The intimate, 13-song set at the 400-capacity venue served as Bridgers’ first solo performance since May 2023 when she opened for Taylor Swift at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium. According to posts from several attendees, Bridgers described the evening (which strictly forbid all recording devices) as a “test” for her third album (and follow-up to 2020’s excellent Punisher).

In addition to hits like “Motion Sickness” and “Kyoto,” Bridgers debuted three to four new songs. One attendee described the new music, which included one track tentatively-titled “This is Gonna Kill Me,” as “very sad folk.” Harmonica arrangements were also featured prominently across the new music, provided by Christian Lee Hutson, who served as part of Bridgers’ band.