Surrounded by her family, attorney Dana Nessel announced her candidacy for Michigan attorney general Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2017, at Braun Court in Ann Arbor.
Mandy Wright | Detroit Free Press | Tribune News Service (Getty Images)
Michigan’s attorney general on Tuesday filed criminal charges against 16 of former President Donald Trump’s so-called “fake electors,” accusing them of defrauding President Joe Biden’s victory in the state’s 2020 election.
The 16 each face eight charges including falsification of election laws, speech and publication and conspiracy, the state attorney general said Dana Nessel said in a video announcement.
Nessel called the plan an “effort to undermine democracy.” Several of the defendants were active in Republican politics.
The case is the first criminal charge against any member of Trump’s fake Electoral College list. Nessel’s announcement came hours after Trump said Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith had designated him the target of a federal criminal investigation aimed at retrieving the former president’s 2020 years of loss.
One of the focuses of Smith’s investigation has been the attempt to use a fake Electoral College roll to prevent a Biden victory.
The so-called Michigan plan
December 14, 2020, weeks after Biden’s defeat With Trump leading by more than 154,000 votes in Michigan, the defendants met secretly in the basement of the state Republican headquarters and signed documents claiming to be the state’s legitimate elector in the Electoral College, Nessel said.
“That was a lie,” Nessel said. “They were not duly elected eligible voters, and each of the defendants knew that.”
After that meeting, “some fake electors tried to get into the state capitol and send their fabricated electoral votes to the Senate, and they were rejected,” she said.
The falsified election documents were then sent to the U.S. Senate and the National Archives “for the purpose of allowing Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election results using a false electoral roll,” Nessel said.
Nessel said the defendants are: Kathy Burden, Ross Rooker, Myra Rodriguez, Hank Choate, Meshaun Maddock, Marianne Henry, John Hager De, Clifford Frost, Kent Vanderwood, Stanley Grote, Marianne Sheridan, Timothy King, James Renner, Michelle Lundgren, Amy Farchinello and Ken Thompson.
The charges, announced Tuesday, carry a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison. Nessel said the accused had a week to turn himself in.
CNN reported in early 2021 that Maddock, the co-chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, said in a recording of a public event: “We are fighting for electoral seats. The Trump campaign asked us to do so. “
Three days before fake voters met and signed fraudulent documents, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a Texas lawsuit challenging election results in Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Nessel noted Tuesday.
Other states are under review
Michigan’s 16 electoral college votes give Biden an edge over Trump.
It is the Electoral College, not the popular vote, that determines the winner of a presidential election.
Trump’s allies in Michigan and several other states, falsely claiming he was the victim of widespread vote fraud, assembled lists of potential Electoral College members with the goal of demanding that then-Vice President Mike Pence accept their validity.
In addition to Michigan, the so-called alternate electoral lists also come from Arizona, Georgia, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
As part of his constitutional duties, Pence presided over a joint session of Congress that began Jan. 6, 2021, to confirm Biden’s victory in the Electoral College.
Pence resisted a push by Trump and Trump’s lawyer John Eastman to accept electors from states the president was winning at the time. A violent mob of Trump supporters invaded the U.S. Capitol, disrupting proceedings and causing Pence and members of Congress to flee and go into hiding.
Last summer, an Atlanta prosecutor told all 16 people impersonating phony electors in Georgia that they were the targets of her criminal probe of Trump and his allies as they sought to undo Biden’s victory in the state .
At least half of Georgia’s fake electors have since reached immunity deals with the prosecutor, Fulton County District Attorney Fanny Willis, according to a court filing in May.