DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Michigan AG charges participants in 2020 fake elector plot

Sixteen fake electors who signed certificates falsely claiming President Donald Trump won Michigan in the 2020 election have been charged with multiple felonies, state Attorney General Dana Nessel announced Tuesday.

This is the first time any of the fake electors have been charged with a crime related to the scheme, versions of which took place in multiple states.

All 16 individuals were each charged with eight felonies: Two counts of forgery, one count of conspiracy to commit forgery, two counts of election law forgery, one count of conspiracy to commit election law forgery, one count of publishing a counterfeit record and one count of conspiring to publish a counterfeit record.

The group of fake electors from Michigan includes current and former state GOP officials, the Republican National Committee member, a sitting mayor, a school board member and Trump supporters who were the plaintiffs in a frivolous lawsuit that tried to overturn the 2020 results.

“This plan, to reject the will of the voters and undermine democracy, was fraudulent and legally baseless,” Nessel said in a video released Tuesday.

Nessel, a Democrat, initially referred the matter to federal prosecutors at the Justice Department, but she reopened the state probe in January. Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith is also actively investigating the fake electors plot, and some fake electors have testified to his grand jury.

CNN has reached out to the defendants seeking comment.

Part of a bigger plan

Michigan was one of the seven battleground states where the Trump campaign put forward slates of “fake electors” as part of their plan to undermine the Electoral College process, and potentially disrupt Congress’ certification of the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021.

The 16 fake GOP electors from Michigan met in Lansing on December 14, 2020, and signed certificates falsely proclaiming that Trump won the state and they were the rightful electors. They were rebuffed by police when they tried to enter the statehouse to deliver the papers, according to videos of the interaction, which took place while the real group of Democratic electors were meeting inside the building. President Joe Biden defeated Trump by a little more than 154,000 votes in the 2020 election.

In the view of the Trump campaign, these were “alternate” electors who could have somehow replaced Biden’s electors when Congress counted the electoral votes on January 6, 2021, handing Trump a second term. However, a wide array of legal experts, including many inside the Trump White House and Trump campaign, thought this plan was unconstitutional and possibly illegal.

The charged individuals are former Michigan GOP co-chair Meshawn Maddock; current Michigan GOP vice chair Marian Sheridan; RNC committeewoman Kathy Berden; Wyoming, Mich., Mayor Kent Vanderwood; Shelby Township clerk Stanley Grot; Grand Blanc school board member Amy Facchinello; local GOP officials Rose Rook and Mari-Ann Henry; pro-Trump lawsuit plaintiffs John Haggard and Timothy King; unsuccessful GOP candidates Clifford Frost and Michele Lundgren; as well as Hank Choate, James Renner, Mayra Rodriguez and Ken Thompson.

CNN has previously reported that Trump campaign officials, led by the former president’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, oversaw efforts to put forward fake slates of electors in seven key states, including Michigan.

An audio recording obtained by CNN early last year captured one of the now-charged fake electors from Michigan boasting that the Trump campaign directed the entire operation.

“We fought to seat the electors. The Trump campaign asked us to do that,” Meshawn Maddock, then the co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, said at a public event at the time that was organized by the conservative group Stand Up Michigan, according to the recording.

The House January 6 committee uncovered evidence that Trump knew about the plan and that he spoke directly about it with RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who is from Michigan. She testified that Trump and his allies told her the electors’ plan was important, and that the RNC later helped the Trump campaign assemble the slates of GOP electors.

Federal investigators from the special counsel’s office have asked key witnesses in their separate investigation about the role of higher-level Trump officials in the fake electors scheme, CNN has reported.

A scheme to ‘upend our Constitution’

In the video released Tuesday alongside the charges, Nessel once again shot back against allegations that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent, saying that the election in her state “was procedurally the same as in every previous modern presidential election.”

“These defendants may have believed the now long-debunked myths of vote tampering or ballot dumps,” Nessel said. “They may have felt compelled to follow the call to action from a president they held fealty to. They may have even genuinely believed that this was their patriotic duty.”

She continued, “But none of those reasons or feelings provide legal justification to violate the law and upend our Constitution and our nation’s traditions of representative government, self-determination, and a government by the people.”

Nessel also said that her office will continue to investigate efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and “has not ruled out potential charges against additional defendants.” She also pre-empted attacks that will surely come from Trump allies, who may claim the indictments are politically motivated.

“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.

Michigan’s top elections official, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, praised the charges Tuesday, telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper on “AC360” that they are a “strong and bold statement” that is “rooted in facts and the law.”

“We hope, and I expect, this will have a deterrent effect for any plans that are afoot,” Benson continued, looking ahead to the 2024 election.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/18/politics/michigan-fake-electors/index.html

Heard last night that Arizona is looking to do the same

There were seven states in all where this happened, which if successful would have overturned the outcome of the 2020 presidential race. But if you listen to him now, trump is accusing democrats of election interference and of stealing the 2020 election with zero actual evidence to support it. Which is the very exact thing his supporters were guilty of with not only verbal but documented evidence of.


And yet it's these very same people blaming weaponization of the federal government when they get called out for their crimes. And their followers eat it up like candy.

THIS is what it looks like when you try to overthrow an election!

Michigan clerk stripped of election duties after being charged for acting as fake elector in 2020

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A town clerk in Michigan will be barred from running any elections after being charged earlier this week by the state attorney general for acting as a fake elector in 2020 for then-President Donald Trump.

On Thursday, the Michigan Bureau of Elections notified Stan Grot, a Republican who has served as the Shelby Township clerk since 2012, that he will be prohibited from administering elections while the charges are pending.

Grot was among the 16 Republicans charged earlier this week by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel for allegedly signing certificates that falsely stated Trump won the state, not Biden. Each of the 16 people face the same eight criminal charges, including forgery and conspiracy to commit election forgery. The most serious charges carry a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.

In a phone interview with the Associated Press, Grot declined to discuss the charges against him but pledged to adhere to the directive in the letter.

“There’s a request for me to recuse myself from elections until the issue of charges is resolved and I intend to abide by it,” Grot said.

Conducting elections is one of the primary duties of a clerk. Grot is an elected official and will continue in his other roles as township clerk, such as preparing agendas and recording meetings. Shelby Township is a suburb of Detroit and holds a population of close to 80,000.

The letter, provided by the secretary of state’s office, says that while Grot is “innocent until proven guilty,” his alleged role in the fake elector scheme “undermines voter confidence in the integrity of elections.”

Local clerks across the country have faced legal consequences for alleged crimes committed after embracing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

A former clerk in Colorado, Tina Peters, is awaiting trial after an alleged effort to breach voting system technology that is used across the country following the 2020 election, according to an indictment.

Stephanie Scott, a small-town clerk in Michigan accused of improperly handling voting equipment after casting doubt on Biden’s election victory, was stripped of her election duties in 2021. She was ousted by voters earlier this year.

Grot and others allegedly met inside the Michigan Republican Party headquarters on December 14, 2020. They signed their names to a certificate stating they were the qualified electors for Trump and transmitted the false documents to Congress and the National Archives, according to an affidavit released by Nessel’s office Tuesday.

The group includes the head of the Republican National Committee’s chapter in Michigan, Kathy Berden, as well as the former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, Meshawn Maddock, and Kent Vanderwood, the mayor of a west Michigan city.

The 16 charged individuals are scheduled to appear in an Ingham County district court on August 10 for an arraignment.

In the past, Grot has also served as a county commissioner, county deputy treasurer and assistant secretary of state, according to his Shelby Township biography. He sought the Republican nomination for secretary of state in 2018 before dropping out due to family obligations and “timing and the overall political atmosphere.”

https://apnews.com/article/fake-elector-michigan-clerk-elections-a4412db9d22d9293297e7b765ff7625f

It makes one wonder which party should have actually been shouting "Stop the steal". Or at least it should.

bUt hUnTer BiDeN!!

Once again we see the Goper party is full of cheaters. So typical.

And the Durham Report...And Hillarys Emails

I am surprised that this has taken so long. Probably the easiest case in the world to prove.

Did you read the document.

What evidence do you have to support that the document was true?

Did you sign the document?

Is this your signature?

End of questioning.

Unlikely to happen because no defendant would be dumb enough to take the stand.

I'm not sure they aren't dumb enough to take the stand... I mean, they allowed themselves to be filmed trying to barge into the building where the legit electors were meeting... They signed documents proving they did exactly what they are accused of.

So, I think it's an easy leap for them to think they were right all along and want to take the stand... Just saying, these aren't the brightest bulbs in the lamp. They keep proving it over and over.

And you see clips of Trumpians all over the place STILL SWEARING the election was stolen. Their minds just don’t function normally anymore, if they ever did in the first place.

Crazy, this is evidence that the GOP is the deep state.

Look how many fake electoral schemes happened around the country, led by conservative/Republican activist, elected officials, and other people in the name of Trump.

That’s a straight up Bond villain plot. That’s illuminati, new world order actions and behaviors right there, yet these conservatives got the nerve to think everyone else is the problem.

Let’s not forget these conservatives tried to kidnap the governor. I’m trying to figure out the difference between these conservative activists and a bunch of warlords in Africa.

The war lords can form an original thought.

I will just say that no one other than Trump supporters have been criminally indicted for election fraud.

Individuals excluded obviously, but they exist on both sides.