Michigan charges 16 fake electors for Donald Trump with election law and forgery feloniesLANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan’s attorney general filed felony charges Tuesday against 16 Republicans who acted as fake electors for then-President Donald Trump in 2020, accusing them of submitting false certificates that confirmed they were legitimate electors despite Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, announced Tuesday that all 16 people would face eight criminal charges, including forgery and conspiracy to commit election forgery. The top charges carry a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.
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 Shelby Township Clerk Stan Grot.
In seven battleground states, including Michigan, supporters of Trump signed certificates that falsely stated he won their states, not Biden. The fake certificates were ignored, but the attempt has been subject to investigations, including by the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
“The false electors’ actions undermined the public’s faith in the integrity of our elections and, we believe, also plainly violated the laws by which we administer our elections in Michigan,” Nessel said in a statement.
The 16 individuals are set to appear for arraignment in Ingham County at a date provided to each by the court, according to Nessel’s office.
Phone and email messages seeking comment Tuesday from several of the people charged were not immediately returned.
One of those charged, John Haggard, 82, of Charlevoix, told The Detroit News on Tuesday that he he didn’t believe he did anything wrong.
“Did I do anything illegal? No,” Haggard said.
GOP state Sen. Ed McBroom, who chaired a GOP-led Senate panel to investigate Michigan’s 2020 presidential election that found no wrongdoing, said he previously spoke with one of the fake electors. It was clear, McBroom said, that the effort was organized by “people who put themselves in a position of authority and posing themselves as the ones who knew what they were doing.”
“They were wrong,” McBroom told The Associated Press. “And other people followed them when they shouldn’t have.”
Berden and Mayra Rodriguez, a Michigan lawyer who was also charged Tuesday, were both questioned by congressional investigators as part of the U.S. House panel’s investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection.
In January of last year, Nessel asked federal prosecutors to open a criminal investigation into the 16 Republicans.
“Obviously this is part of a much bigger conspiracy,” she said at the time.
Electors are people appointed to represent voters in presidential elections. The winner of the popular vote in each state determines which party’s electors are sent to the Electoral College, which meets in December after the election to certify the outcome.
False Electoral College certificates were also submitted declaring Trump the winner of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Investigations are underway in some other states that submitted fake electors, but not all.
A Georgia prosecutor investigating possible illegal meddling in the 2020 election has agreed to immunity deals with at least eight fake electors. And Arizona’s Democratic attorney general is in the very early stages of a probe. Nevada’s attorney general, also a Democrat, has said he won’t bring charges, while Wisconsin has no active investigation and the attorney general has deferred to the U.S. Justice Department.
There is no apparent investigation in Pennsylvania and former Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is now governor, said he didn’t believe there was evidence the actions of the fake electors met the legal standards for forgery.
A group of other Trump allies in Michigan, including former GOP attorney general candidate Matthew DePerno, are facing potential criminal charges related to attempts to gain access to voting machines after the 2020 election.
According to documents released last year by Nessel’s office, five vote tabulators were taken from Roscommon and Missaukee counties in northern Michigan, and Barry County in western Michigan. The tabulators were subsequently broken into and “tests” were performed on the equipment.
A grand jury was convened in March at the request of a special prosecutor to consider indictments, according to court records. The special prosecutor, D.J. Hilson, wrote in May in a court document that “a charging decision is ready to be made.”
https://apnews.com/article/fake-elector-michigan-republican-df7803fca3862be713d9d6d29fb77e81Trump’s target letter suggests the sprawling US probe into the 2020 election is zeroing in on himWASHINGTON (AP) — A target letter sent to Donald Trump suggests that a sprawling Justice Department investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election is zeroing in on him after more than a year of interviews with top aides to the former president and state officials from across the country.
Federal prosecutors have cast a wide net, asking witnesses in recent months about a chaotic White House meeting that included discussion of seizing voting machines and about lawyers’ involvement in plans to block the transfer of power, according to people familiar with the probe. They’ve discussed with witnesses schemes by Trump associates to enlist slates of Republican fake electors in battleground states won by Democrat Joe Biden and interviewed state election officials who faced a pressure campaign over the election results in the days before the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
It is unclear how much longer special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation will last, but its gravity was evident Tuesday when Trump disclosed that he had received a letter from the Justice Department advising him that he was a target of the probe. Such letters often precede criminal charges; Trump received one ahead of his indictment last month on charges that he illegally hoarded classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida.
Though it’s not known when charges might come, the scope of the inquiry stands in stark contrast to Smith’s much narrower classified documents investigation. The vast range of witnesses is a reminder of the tumultuous two months between Trump’s election loss and the insurrection at the Capitol, when some lawyers and advisers aided his futile efforts to remain president while many others implored him to move on or were relentlessly badgered to help alter results.
A spokesperson for Smith declined to comment about the target letter or the interviews that prosecutors have conducted.
Even before Smith inherited the election interference probe last November, Justice Department investigators had already interviewed multiple Trump administration officials, including the chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence and former top lawyers at the White House, scrutinized post-election fundraising and seized as potential evidence the cellphones of numerous lawyers and officials.
Since then, Smith’s team has questioned senior administration officials including Pence himself before a grand jury in Washington. He’s also conducted interviews with a wide array of witnesses outside the federal government, including Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani as well as election officials in states where Trump associates waged fruitless challenges to get results overturned in the Republican incumbent’s favor.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was personally lobbied by Trump to “find 11,780 votes” to overtake Biden, has been interviewed by Smith’s team, as has Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, according to their representatives.
Wisconsin’s top elections administrator and election leaders in Milwaukee and Madison have spoken with federal investigators. And former Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who silenced a call from the Trump White House as he was publicly certifying Biden’s narrow victory in the state, has been contacted by Smith’s team, a spokesperson said.
One person familiar with Smith’s investigation said prosecutors in recent months have expressed interest in the ordeal of Ruby Freeman, a Georgia election worker who along with her daughter recounted to the House of Representative’s Jan. 6 committee how their lives became upended when Trump and allies latched onto surveillance footage to level since-debunked allegations of voter fraud.
Smith’s team has subpoenaed Raffensperger’s office for any “security video or security footage, or any other video of any kind” from State Farm Arena in Atlanta on Nov. 3, 2020, according to a copy of the document obtained by The Associated Press. That’s the video Giuliani and other Trump allies have claimed showed Fulton County election workers, including Freeman, pulling “suitcases of ballots” from under a table. Georgia officials have called those claims false.
A consistent area of interest for investigators has been the role played by Trump-allied lawyers in helping him cling to power, according to people familiar with the investigation who, like others interviewed for the story, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal probe.
John Eastman, a conservative law professor, advanced a dubious legal theory that said Pence could halt the certification of state electoral votes to block Biden’s win. Another lawyer, Sidney Powell, promoted baseless claims of voter fraud and pushed an idea — vigorously opposed by Trump’s lawyers at the White House — that Trump had the authority under an earlier executive order to seize state voting machines.
Charles Burnham, a lawyer for Eastman, said Tuesday that his client had not received a target letter. “We don’t expect one since raising concerns about illegality in the conduct of an election is not now and has never been sanctionable,” he said. A lawyer for Powell declined to comment.
Multiple witnesses have been asked about a heated Dec. 18, 2020 meeting at the White House in which outside advisers, including Powell, raised the voting machines idea, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting, which devolved into a shouting match, featured prominently in the House Jan. 6 investigation, with former White House official Cassidy Hutchinson memorably describing it as “unhinged.”
Giuliani, a Trump lawyer who participated in the meeting and who spearheaded legal challenges to the election results, was asked about that meeting during a voluntary interview with Smith’s team and also detailed to prosecutors Powell’s involvement in failed efforts to overturn the election, according to a person familiar with his account. Giuliani has not received a target letter.
Giuliani’s interview was part of what’s known as a proffer agreement, the person said, in which a person speaks voluntarily with investigators while prosecutors agree not to use those statements in any criminal case they might bring. Prosecutors have worked to negotiate similar arrangements with other witnesses.
As prosecutors dig into efforts by Trump allies to thwart Biden’s victory, they’ve focused on the creation of slates of fake electors from key states captured by Biden who were enlisted by Trump and his allies to sign false certificates stating that Trump had actually won.
Smith’s team has also focused on Trump’s efforts to punish officials from his administration who contradicted his false election fraud claims.
Chris Krebs, who was fired by Trump as director of the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency after vouching for the integrity of the 2020 vote, was interviewed by prosecutors about the perceived retaliation, according to a person familiar with the questioning.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-jan-6-justice-department-charges-ab1ad197e9abcb3eb9095237b98bee7dGeorgia’s top court rejects Trump attempt to thwart prosecutor in 2020 election investigationGeorgia’s highest court Monday rejected a request by former President Donald Trump to block a district attorney from prosecuting him for his actions in wake of the 2020 election.
The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously shot down a petition that Trump’s attorneys filed last week asking the court to intervene. Trump’s legal team argued that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office should be barred from seeking charges and that a special grand jury report that is part of the inquiry should be thrown out.
Willis has been investigating since early 2021 whether Trump and his allies broke any laws as they tried to overturn his narrow election loss in Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden. She has suggested she is likely to seek charges in the case from a grand jury next month.
The state Supreme Court noted in its five-page ruling Monday that Trump has a similar petition pending in Fulton County Superior Court. The justices unanimously declined to overstep the lower court, writing that Trump “makes no showing that he has been prevented fair access to the ordinary channels.”
Regarding Trump’s attempt to block the prosecutors, the justices said his legal filing lacked “the facts or the law necessary to mandate Willis’s disqualification by this Court at this time on this record.”
A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment. Trump attorney Drew Findling did not immediately respond to phone and text messages seeking comment.
Trump’s legal team previously acknowledged that the dual filings were unusual, but said they were necessary given the tight time frame. Two new regular grand juries were seated last week, and one is likely to hear the case.
Trump’s attorneys made similar requests in a previous filing in March in Fulton County Superior Court. They asked Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury, to step aside and let another judge hear the Trump team’s claims. McBurney kept the case and has yet to rule.
In their legal petition to the state Supreme Court, Trump’s lawyers argued they were “stranded between the Supervising Judge’s protracted passivity and the District Attorney’s looming indictment” with no choice other than to ask the high court to intervene.
Willis opened her investigation shortly after Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021 and suggested the state’s top elections official could help him “find” the votes needed to overturn his election loss in the state.
The special grand jury, which did not have the power to issue indictments, was seated last May and dissolved in January after hearing from 75 witnesses and submitting a report with recommendations for Willis. Though most of that report remains under wraps for now, the panel’s foreperson has said without naming names that the special grand jury recommended charging multiple people.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-georgia-grand-jury-election-485ca85e57fd80af7455a59174d10d4f
