The Michigan Attorney General’s Office has charged 16 people for signing certificates claiming that former President Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2020.
The individuals have each been charged with eight felony counts, including forgery, conspiracy to commit forgery, and election law forgery. Some of the charges carry jail sentences of 14 years and/or a $10,000 fine.
RUDY SALAS ANNOUNCES CAMPAIGN TO KNOCK OFF VULNERABLE CALIFORNIA HOUSE REPUBLICAN
Attorney General Dana Nessel announced the charges against Kathleen Berden, William Choate, Amy Marie Facchinello, Clifford Frost Jr., Stanley Grot, John Haggard, Mari-ann McQuater Henry, Timothy King, Michele Goder Lundgren, Meshawn Maddock, James Robbins Renner, Mayra Adela Rodriguez, Rose Rook, Marian Sheridan, Kenneth Thompson, and Kent Vanderwood on Tuesday.
The conspiracy to commit forgery charge states that the defendants conspired with Rodriguez, Berden, and Maddock, specifically, to “falsely make, alter, forge, or counterfeit a public record, with the intent to injure or defraud.”
Rodriguez was the only licensed lawyer among the group of Trump fake electors, according to the state bar’s website. Berden is a Michigan Republican national committeewoman, and Maddock is the former co-chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.
According to the attorney general’s office, the fake electors allegedly met covertly in the basement of the Michigan Republican Party headquarters on Dec. 14 and signed their names to several certificates that stated they were the “duly elected and qualified electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America for the State of Michigan.”
“These false documents were then transmitted to the United States Senate and National Archives in a coordinated effort to award the state’s electoral votes to the candidate of their choosing, in place of the candidates actually elected by the people of Michigan,” the attorney general’s office said in a release.
Nessel said the evidence shows that the fake electors had “no legal authority” and that every serious challenge to the Michigan 2020 election results had been “denied, dismissed, or otherwise rejected by the time the false electors convened.”
“There was no legitimate legal avenue or plausible use of such a document or an alternative slate of electors,” the Michigan attorney general said. “There was only the desperate effort of these defendants, who we have charged with deliberately attempting to interfere with and overturn our free and fair election process, and along with it, the will of millions of Michigan voters.”
Michigan was one of the seven battleground states where the Trump campaign put forward slates of “fake electors” as part of their strategy to sabotage the Electoral College process and potentially disrupt the certification of the 2020 election results by Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.
President Joe Biden defeated Trump by a little over 154,000 votes in the 2020 election.
The group of fake electors from Michigan includes current and former state GOP officials, a sitting mayor, a school board member, and Trump supporters that filed a lawsuit claiming the election was stolen from the former president.
Nessel had originally referred the situation to federal prosecutors at the Justice Department, but she reopened the state’s investigation in January.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“There will be those who claim these charges are political in nature. But when there is overwhelming evidence of guilt in respect to multiple crimes, the most political act I could engage in as a prosecutor would be to take no action at all,” Nessel said in recorded remarks.
The Michigan attorney general added that her office will continue to investigate efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and she “has not ruled out potential charges against additional defendants.”
