michigan charges sixteen in fake electors scheme
- Thread starter nsacpi
- Start date
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) announced felony charges Tuesday against the 16 Michigan Republicans who falsely claimed to be the state’s 2020 presidential electors for forgery and other crimes, bringing the first charges in the country against Trump electors as investigations over attempts to overturn those results intensify across the country.
The charges were brought against former state Republican Party co-chairwoman Meshawn Maddock and 15 others for submitting official-looking paperwork to the federal government asserting they were casting the state’s electoral votes for Donald Trump. Joe Biden won Michigan, and courts swiftly threw out lawsuits claiming Trump was the true winner of the state.
The charges stem from a state investigation that is separate from a federal probe by special counsel Jack Smith into attempts to reverse the 2020 results. Trump on Tuesday said he had received a Justice Department letter telling him he was a target of Smith’s investigation.
After Trump lost, Republicans in seven states that Biden won — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — filed paperwork claiming to be their states’ true electors.
The GOP electors in Michigan are the first to face criminal charges. In addition to Smith’s investigation, prosecutors in Arizona and Georgia are looking into the GOP electors in their states and civil lawsuits have been filed against electors in Michigan and Wisconsin.
In Michigan, each Trump elector was charged with one county of conspiracy to commit forgery, two counts of forgery, one count of conspiracy to commit “uttering and publishing," one count of “uttering and publishing,” one count of conspiracy to commit election law forgery and two counts of election law forgery.
Nessel investigated the Republican electors after the 2020 election and last year referred their activities to federal prosecutors. After being sworn in for a second term in January, she announced she was reopening her own probe of the GOP electors because she didn’t know what federal prosecutors planned to do with the case after having it for a year. At the time, she said the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol had turned up strong evidence to support charging the Trump electors from Michigan.
Attorneys for the Trump electors in Michigan did not immediately provide comment Tuesday.
Electors in every state met on Dec. 14, 2020, to cast their votes for president. Since Biden won Michigan by more than 150,000 votes, a slate of his electors gathered at the state capitol to cast their ballots. Ahead of time, Republicans in Michigan discussed hiding overnight in the state capitol so they could simultaneously have pro-Trump electors cast a competing set of votes, according to testimony former state GOP chairwoman Laura Cox provided to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Cox rejected the idea.
The Trump electors signed their paperwork elsewhere and then attempted to enter the state capitol to deliver their votes. They were turned away by police who said the state’s electors had already arrived, according to a video posted online by the Detroit Free Press.
“We tried to gain access to the Capitol and we were denied,” Maddock said at a news conference the next day. “We were holding our certified ballots in our hands. We also even just tried to say, ‘Will you take these in?’ or, ‘Will you have somebody from Senate chambers come down and take them in?’ We did everything we could to try to deliver our ballots to the Senate floor and they denied us that.”
Another Trump elector from Michigan, Marian Sheridan, at the news conference described the Republican electors as a “backup slate.”
Maddock soon afterward was chosen as co-chairwoman of the state Republican Party. She did not seek another term this year.
A year after the Republican electors met, Maddock described what happened at an event hosted by the conservative group Stand Up Michigan. “We fought to seat the electors. The Trump campaign asked us to do that,” she said, according to a recording obtained by CNN at the time.
A special prosecutor in Michigan is separately investigating whether a sheriff, a former state lawmaker, attorneys and others improperly gained access to voting machines as they attempted to look into how the 2020 election was conducted. Nessel initiated that investigation but turned it over to a special prosecutor last year because one of the subjects of the probe was Matthew DePerno, who at the time was running against Nessel for attorney general.
In Arizona, Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) recently escalated her probe into the 2020 election, assigned a team of prosecutors to the case and had investigators interviewed many of the Trump electors and their lawyers. In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) has been conducting a wide-ranging probe of activities in her state since the release 2 ½ years ago of a recording of Trump asking Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” votes for him. Willis has indicated that she could pursue indictments in the coming weeks.
Prosecutors in other states have remained mostly quiet and avoided offering clues about whether they are investigating the Trump electors.
https://wapo.st/3OjRawk
The charges were brought against former state Republican Party co-chairwoman Meshawn Maddock and 15 others for submitting official-looking paperwork to the federal government asserting they were casting the state’s electoral votes for Donald Trump. Joe Biden won Michigan, and courts swiftly threw out lawsuits claiming Trump was the true winner of the state.
The charges stem from a state investigation that is separate from a federal probe by special counsel Jack Smith into attempts to reverse the 2020 results. Trump on Tuesday said he had received a Justice Department letter telling him he was a target of Smith’s investigation.
After Trump lost, Republicans in seven states that Biden won — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — filed paperwork claiming to be their states’ true electors.
The GOP electors in Michigan are the first to face criminal charges. In addition to Smith’s investigation, prosecutors in Arizona and Georgia are looking into the GOP electors in their states and civil lawsuits have been filed against electors in Michigan and Wisconsin.
In Michigan, each Trump elector was charged with one county of conspiracy to commit forgery, two counts of forgery, one count of conspiracy to commit “uttering and publishing," one count of “uttering and publishing,” one count of conspiracy to commit election law forgery and two counts of election law forgery.
Nessel investigated the Republican electors after the 2020 election and last year referred their activities to federal prosecutors. After being sworn in for a second term in January, she announced she was reopening her own probe of the GOP electors because she didn’t know what federal prosecutors planned to do with the case after having it for a year. At the time, she said the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol had turned up strong evidence to support charging the Trump electors from Michigan.
Attorneys for the Trump electors in Michigan did not immediately provide comment Tuesday.
Electors in every state met on Dec. 14, 2020, to cast their votes for president. Since Biden won Michigan by more than 150,000 votes, a slate of his electors gathered at the state capitol to cast their ballots. Ahead of time, Republicans in Michigan discussed hiding overnight in the state capitol so they could simultaneously have pro-Trump electors cast a competing set of votes, according to testimony former state GOP chairwoman Laura Cox provided to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Cox rejected the idea.
The Trump electors signed their paperwork elsewhere and then attempted to enter the state capitol to deliver their votes. They were turned away by police who said the state’s electors had already arrived, according to a video posted online by the Detroit Free Press.
“We tried to gain access to the Capitol and we were denied,” Maddock said at a news conference the next day. “We were holding our certified ballots in our hands. We also even just tried to say, ‘Will you take these in?’ or, ‘Will you have somebody from Senate chambers come down and take them in?’ We did everything we could to try to deliver our ballots to the Senate floor and they denied us that.”
Another Trump elector from Michigan, Marian Sheridan, at the news conference described the Republican electors as a “backup slate.”
Maddock soon afterward was chosen as co-chairwoman of the state Republican Party. She did not seek another term this year.
A year after the Republican electors met, Maddock described what happened at an event hosted by the conservative group Stand Up Michigan. “We fought to seat the electors. The Trump campaign asked us to do that,” she said, according to a recording obtained by CNN at the time.
A special prosecutor in Michigan is separately investigating whether a sheriff, a former state lawmaker, attorneys and others improperly gained access to voting machines as they attempted to look into how the 2020 election was conducted. Nessel initiated that investigation but turned it over to a special prosecutor last year because one of the subjects of the probe was Matthew DePerno, who at the time was running against Nessel for attorney general.
In Arizona, Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) recently escalated her probe into the 2020 election, assigned a team of prosecutors to the case and had investigators interviewed many of the Trump electors and their lawyers. In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) has been conducting a wide-ranging probe of activities in her state since the release 2 ½ years ago of a recording of Trump asking Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” votes for him. Willis has indicated that she could pursue indictments in the coming weeks.
Prosecutors in other states have remained mostly quiet and avoided offering clues about whether they are investigating the Trump electors.
https://wapo.st/3OjRawk
It's only against the law when you do it against democrats.
https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/15/the-lefts-2020-fake-electors-narrative-is-fake-news/
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/democrats-electoral-college-faithless-trump-231731
https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/15/the-lefts-2020-fake-electors-narrative-is-fake-news/
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/democrats-electoral-college-faithless-trump-231731
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
There is also the small matter that they lost Michigan by over 100,000 votes. A rather significant difference from the cliffhanger in Hawaii in 1960 when as of the deadline for certifying the electors a recount was under way that would in fact change the outcome (in Hawaii).
cajunrevenge
Well-known member
Unlike legal scholar Garmel I don't know too much about these laws. The AG is apparently conceding that alternate electors are legal in the context of having them ready to go in a close race where the outcome could change. That's the context the fake news will tell morons like Garmel who will then regurgitate it all over the place. What they will leave out is that all legal challenges and recounts were over when they made this document with the margin of victory being well beyond what a reasonable person could assume might be overcome, and the fake electors STILL tried to submit their fake documents as the real ones. Had they not tried to submit the documents I don't think there would be any charges.
The great thing to me about everything over these last few years is MAGA keeps getting what they wanted. You wanted people to be held responsible for stealing classified documents? You got it. You want to "stop the steal" of the election. The efforts to steal the election were thwarted. You wanted fake news held accountable and it was when Fox News and Alex Jones lost defamation lawsuits. You wanted election fraud prosecuted. Here you go. They keep getting what they want and they hate it.
The great thing to me about everything over these last few years is MAGA keeps getting what they wanted. You wanted people to be held responsible for stealing classified documents? You got it. You want to "stop the steal" of the election. The efforts to steal the election were thwarted. You wanted fake news held accountable and it was when Fox News and Alex Jones lost defamation lawsuits. You wanted election fraud prosecuted. Here you go. They keep getting what they want and they hate it.