LANSING, Mich. (CN) — Sixteen Michigan Republicans who falsely claimed to be the state’s 2020 presidential electors in an effort to overturn the election of Joe Biden face a number of forgery-related felony charges, making them the first of several slates of self-appointed Trump electors to face charges.
According to charging documents, former state GOP co-chair Meshawn Maddock and 15 other party members gathered at Michigan’s Republican headquarters in December 2020 to execute a document entitled “Certificate of The Votes Of The 2020 Electors From Michigan,” with the intent of presenting it to Congress in an effort to certify the election in favor of then-President Donald Trump. Neither election officials’ confirmation that Biden won more votes in Michigan nor the fact that not all of the GOP electors selected before the election were present halted them, an investigator with Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office wrote in an affidavit. Nor, he noted, did the document’s assertions that it was signed in the state Capitol.
The defendants, the affidavit noted, were not covert about their intention to overturn the Michigan election results. They sent copies of their certificate to several state and federal officials, along with the National Archives and Records Administration. Some also spoke candidly with the media about their involvement.
Nessel announced the charges in a videotaped statement Tuesday. Each of the 16 self-proclaimed electors, she said, face one count each of conspiracy to commit forgery, conspiracy to commit uttering and publishing — a felony in Michigan law related to the publication of forged documents as true — uttering and publishing and conspiracy to commit election law forgery, and two counts each of forgery and election law forgery.
“The election in Michigan was procedurally the same as in every previous presidential election,” Nessel said in her video statement. “Despite this, the groundwork was laid for a plan to send alternative slates of Trump’s electors to Congress in an attempt to outmaneuver and circumvent the long-standing Electoral College process.”
“Undoubtedly, there are those who will claim these charges are political in nature,” Nessel added. “But where there is overwhelming evidence of guilt with respect to multiple crimes, the most political act I could engage in as a prosecutor would be to take no action at all.”
Michigan is not alone in having an “alternate” slate of electors who attempted to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. In Arizona, Attorney General Kris Mayes has launched a probe into a similar scheme. Tuesday also brought an announcement by Trump himself that he had received a letter from the Justice Department informing him that he is a target of its investigation into efforts to overturn the election.
Maddock has also been caught on record saying "we fought to seat the electors, the Trump campaign asked us to do that” at a public event organized by conservative group Stand Up Michigan in early 2022.
Also pending in Michigan is a special prosecutor's separate investigation into whether a sheriff, former state lawmaker, a number of attorneys and others improperly gained access to voting machines after the election. Nessel's office passed that case off to the Prosecuting Attorneys Coordinating Council to consider charges, citing a potential conflict of interest because one of the defendants was her Republican opponent in the 2022 election.
The various charges against the defendants carry sentences of up to 14 years in prison.
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