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AG Dana Nessel announces charges against the 16.
Attorney General Dana Nessel, who battled with Donald Trump during his four-year reign in the Oval Office, announced charges Tuesday against 16 Michigan residents for their alleged role in a false electors scheme designed to try and overturn the 2020 presidential election.
One of those 16 is Meshawn Maddock, a big Trump supporter who served as co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party from 2021 until earlier this year when she chose not to run for re-election.
It marks the first criminal case in the country involving false electors. The issue surfaced in other states as well.
In a press release, Nessel stated:
These defendants are alleged to have met covertly in the basement of the Michigan Republican Party headquarters on December 14th, and signed their names to multiple certificates stating they were the “duly elected and qualified electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America for the State of Michigan.” These false documents were then transmitted to the United States Senate and National Archives in a coordinated effort to award the state’s electoral votes to the candidate of their choosing, in place of the candidates actually elected by the people of Michigan.
“The evidence will demonstrate there was no legal authority for the false electors to purport to act as ‘duly elected presidential electors’ and execute the false electoral documents,” Nessel continued. “Every serious challenge to the election had been denied, dismissed, or otherwise rejected by the time the false electors convened. There was no legitimate legal avenue or plausible use of such a document or an alternative slate of electors. There was only the desperate effort of these defendants, who we have charged with deliberately attempting to interfere with and overturn our free and fair election process, and along with it, the will of millions of Michigan voters. That the effort failed and democracy prevailed does not erase the crimes of those who enacted the false electors plot.”
Nessel noted that she had not ruled out charges against more people.
Each were charged with:
- One count of Conspiracy to Commit Forgery, a 14-year felony,
- Two counts of Forgery, a 14-year felony,
- One count of Conspiracy to Commit Uttering and Publishing, a 14-year felony,
- One count of Uttering and Publishing, a 14-year felony,
- One count of Conspiracy to Commit Election Law Forgery, a 5-year felony, and,
- Two counts of Election Law Forgery, a 5-year felony.
Those charged include:
