Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) announced felony charges for 16 Michiganders “for their role in the alleged false electors scheme following the 2020 U.S. presidential election.”
The news from Michigan has led to speculation on Twitter that Special Counsel Jack Smith is taking aim at senior Trump advisers – including the former president – who allegedly directed the scheme.
The charged defendants are:
- Former Michigan Republican Party Co-Chairwoman Meshawn Maddock, 55, of Milford
- Kathy Berden, 70, of Snover
- William (Hank) Choate, 72, of Cement City
- Amy Facchinello, 55, of Grand Blanc
- Clifford Frost, 75, of Warren
- Stanley Grot, 71, of Shelby Township
- John Haggard, 82, of Charlevoix
- Mary-Ann Henry, 65, of Brighton
- Timothy King, 56, of Ypsilanti
- Michele Lundgren, 73, of Detroit
- James Renner, 76, of Lansing
- Mayra Rodriguez, 64, of Grosse Pointe Farms
- Rose Rook, 81, of Paw Paw
- Marian Sheridan, 69, of West Bloomfield
- Ken Thompson, 68, of Orleans
- Kent Vanderwood, 69, of Wyoming
All 16 Republican operatives face charges of:
- One count of Conspiracy to Commit Forgery, a 14-year felony,
- Two counts of Forgery, a 14-year felony,
- One count of Conspiracy to Commit Uttering and Publishing, a 14-year felony,
- One count of Uttering and Publishing, a 14-year felony,
- One count of Conspiracy to Commit Election Law Forgery, a 5-year felony, and
- Two counts of Election Law Forgery, a 5-year felony.
They allegedly sought to overturn then-President-elect Biden's certified 2020 victory in Michigan as fake electors and award the state's electoral votes to then-President Donald Trump.
The Detroit News reports:
The revelation capped six months of investigation and produced the most serious allegations yet in Michigan over the campaign to overturn Trump's loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. Biden won the state by 154,000 votes or 3 percentage points, but Trump and his supporters maintained false and unproven claims that fraud swung the result.
As part of the push to undermine Biden's victory, Trump supporters gathered inside the then-Michigan Republican Party headquarters on Dec. 14, 2020, and signed a certificate, claiming to cast the state's 16 electoral votes for Trump.
Eventually, the false certificate was sent to the National Archives and Congress. The document inaccurately claimed the Trump electors had met inside the Michigan Capitol. However, they hadn't. Biden's electors convened inside the Capitol, and the building was closed to others on Dec. 14, 2020.
“The false electors' actions undermined the public's faith in the integrity of our elections and, we believe, also plainly violated the laws by which we administer our elections in Michigan,” Nessel, a Democrat, said in a statement.
“My department has prosecuted numerous cases of election law violations throughout my tenure, and it would be malfeasance of the greatest magnitude if my department failed to act here in the face of overwhelming evidence of an organized effort to circumvent the lawfully cast ballots of millions of Michigan voters in a presidential election,” she added.
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