Some of the Republican officials who signed phony electoral certificates made damning admissions to a reporter in the days after Donald Trump lost the presidential election.

The House select committee is investigating efforts by state-level Republicans, overseen by Rudy Giuliani and other Trump campaign officials, to send “alternate” slates of electors to Congress, and those GOP officials told Politico’s Kyle Cheney they understood what they were doing was probably against the law.

“What I might want to do can be completely different from what we are legally capable of doing, does that make sense?” Michigan GOP elector Meshawn Maddock told Cheney by email in November 2020.

However, Maddock — who’s now co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party — ultimately joined other Michigan Republicans who signed the unofficial certificates, and a Georgia elector also suggested that she knew the scheme was sketchy.

READ: Republican who signed forged 2020 certification ran Russian-style troll farm that paid teens to post pro-Trump propaganda

“Bahahaha you think I’m going to respond to you?” Georgia GOP elector Cathy Latham told Cheney by email in late 2020. “You don’t know GA law. Read the Constitution.”

However, when pressed, Latham admitted she would go along with the scheme.

“I am [a] Republican elector for Trump,” Latham said. “I serve at the pleasure of the President and the GAGOP. I will serve when called and directed to cast my vote for Trump.”

“The Court may look the other way, but I cannot.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor expressed outrage at her conservative Supreme Court colleagues Thursday afternoon, after the six right wing jurists went one step further in attacking the constitutional guarantee of abortion.

Voting 6-3 against a women’s health care provider the Court denied a request by Texas Women’s Health, which provides abortion services, to change jurisdictions, which according to Justice Sotomayor the Court should have done.

“The lawsuit is now stalled with the Texas Supreme Court,” Rewire News reports.

Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, a Supreme Court expert calls Sotomayor’s dissent “stunning.”

“This case is a disaster for the rule of law and a grave disservice to women in Texas, who have a right to control their own bodies,” Sotomayor writes. “I will not stand by silently as a State continues to nullify this constitutional guarantee. I dissent.”

She begins her dissent by explaining the case:

“It has been over four months since Texas Senate Bill 8 (S. B. 8) took effect. The law immediately devastated access to abortion care in Texas through a complicated private-bounty-hunter scheme that violates nearly 50 years of this Court’s precedents.”

“Today, for the fourth time, this Court declines to protect pregnant Texans from egregious violations of their constitutional rights. One month after directing that the petitioners’ suit could proceed in part, the Court countenances yet another violation of its own commands. Instead of stopping a Fifth Circuit panel from indulging Texas’ newest delay tactics, the Court allows the State yet again to extend the deprivation of the federal constitutional rights of its citizens through procedural manipulation. The Court may look the other way, but I cannot.”

In response the Guttmacher Institute, an organization focused on sexual and reproductive health and rights, accused the Supreme Court of “once again putting ideology over the rule of law.”

Image via Shutterstock

Ivanka Trump is responding to her invitation from the January 6 Committee by issuing a statement that is being seen suggesting she has no intention of accepting. Earlier Thursday the Committee sent the former First Daughter and White House senior advisor a lengthy 11-page letter asking for her voluntary cooperation.

A statement from her spokesperson given to CNN White House Correspondent Kate Bennett references a tweet posted by Ivanka Trump the day of the attack on the Capitol – a tweet she was forced to delete after massive outrage.

“As the Committee already knows, Ivanka did not speak at the January 6 rally,” the statement reads. “As she publicly stated at 3:15pm, ‘any security breach or disrespect to our law enforcement is unacceptable. The violence must stop immediately.”

NEW: @IvankaTrump‘s spokesperson tells me Ivanka “just learned” of the 1/6 Committee’s invitation to appear before them, but from the response below, it sounds as though she isn’t planning to do so: pic.twitter.com/VXpUXDnEuP

— Kate Bennett (@KateBennett_DC) January 20, 2022

But actually, Ivanka Trump called the insurrectionists “American Patriots,” as CNN reported that day:

Ivanka Trump addressed the rioters as “American Patriots” in a tweet, then deleted it https://t.co/lJvkzNsi1e pic.twitter.com/qSH3T9I5gc

— CNN (@CNN) January 6, 2021