Michigan Democrat Attorney General Dana Nessel announced on Tuesday that felony charges have been filed against 16 people for their "role in the alleged false electors scheme following the 2020 U.S. presidential election."
The Michigan residents allegedly met on Dec. 14, 2020 in order to sign several documents certifying that they were the "duly elected and qualified electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America for the State of Michigan," the announcement said.
The documents were then allegedly "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," according to the statement.
Democrats and their Big Media allies have been peddling the “fake electors” narrative for years.
The Federalist's Jordan Boyd noted on Wednesday: "History, however, shows the charges are nothing more than a political ploy to advance the left’s war on anyone who questions election results or seeks solutions to preserve election integrity. In fact, attacks on the Trump electors in Michigan, a state where election fraud was reported in both 2020 and 2022, come from the same party and its institutional allies that formally objected to every GOP presidential certification this century and shamelessly attempted to turn electors against their political enemy Trump in 2016."
When it became clear in November 2016 that Donald Trump would become the 45th president of the United States, "Democrats and their allies scrambled to influence electors," Boyd continued. "Corporate media quickly rose to the top as the loudest voice calling for electoral disobedience. Articles demanding state electors 'prevent an irresponsible demagogue from taking office' and overrule Americans to install Hillary Clinton as president popped up in the pages of The Atlantic, The Washington Post, the Daily Beast, Vox, and Time."
The New York Times published an article from a Texas-based Republican elector explaining “Why I Will Not Cast My Electoral Vote for Donald Trump.”
In the charges announced on Tuesday, Nessel repeatedly painted the Michigan defendants as “false elector” co-conspirators who participated in a “desperate effort” to “interfere with and overturn our free and fair election process, and along with it, the will of millions of Michigan voters.”
Legally, Boyd pointed out, "there’s no such thing as 'false electors.' "
“There were contingent Republican electors named consistent with legal precedent to preserve the still ongoing legal challenges to the validity of Georgia’s certified vote,” The Federalist's Margot Cleveland explained in May when corporate media tried to smear Republican electors in the Peach State.
A similar elector swap to those in Michigan and Georgia happened in Hawaii in 1960. As Cleveland pointed out, it received praise instead of scrutiny because Democrats and their preferred candidate came out on top.
After Richard Nixon was initially declared the victor in Hawaii in 1960, both Nixon’s and John F. Kennedy’s electors decided to meet and “cast their votes for President and Vice President, and certified their own meeting and votes.” The three Hawaii electors, all Democrats, cast their votes for Kennedy.
When state circuit court Judge Ronald Jamieson eventually ruled Kennedy the winner of the presidency, Cleveland said he “stressed the importance of the Democrat electors having met on Dec. 19, as prescribed by the Electoral Count Act, to cast their ballots in favor of Kennedy. That step allowed the Hawaii governor to then certify Kennedy as the winner of Hawaii’s three electoral votes and, in turn, Congress to count Hawaii’s electoral votes in favor of Kennedy.”
How Democrats and Republicans are treated on the elector issue "merely confirms Americans’ worst fears about the nation’s two-tiered system of justice," Boyd wrote. "If you’re a loyal leftist partisan harping on voting machines and Russian 'hacking,' objecting to every GOP victory, and demanding electors vote against the will of the people, you’re a hero and protector of democracy. If you do the same to the benefit of a Republican candidate, you’ve fomented a 'coup attempt' and betrayed the soul of the nation."
The charged Michigan defendants are:
Kathy Berden, 70, of Snover
William (Hank) Choate, 72, of Cement City
Amy Facchinello, 55, of Grand Blanc
Clifford Frost, 75, of Warren
Stanley Grot, 71, of Shelby Township
John Haggard, 82, of Charlevoix
Mari-Ann Henry, 65, of Brighton
Timothy King, 56, of Ypsilanti
Michele Lundgren, 73, of Detroit
Meshawn Maddock, 55, of Milford
James Renner, 76, of Lansing
Mayra Rodriguez, 64, of Grosse Pointe Farms
Rose Rook, 81, of Paw Paw
Marian Sheridan, 69, of West Bloomfield
Ken Thompson, 68, of Orleans
Kent Vanderwood, 69, of Wyoming
Each defendant has been 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.
“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,” said Nessel. "My department has prosecuted numerous cases of election law violations throughout my tenure, and it would be malfeasance of the greatest magnitude if my department failed to act here in the face of overwhelming evidence of an organized effort to circumvent the lawfully cast ballots of millions of Michigan voters in a presidential election.”
The Michigan attorney general added that her office will continue to investigate efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and she “has not ruled out potential charges against additional defendants.”
In 2016, a bunch of B list Hollywood has-beens made a video urging 37 Republican electors to defect and defy the will of the voters who elected Donald Trump. It didn't happen, but you know what else didn't happen? No one suggested throwing these celebs in the gulag either. The… pic.twitter.com/hoeXsWwb7N
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) July 19, 2023
🚨BREAKING: Michigan AG charges 16 Trump electors w/felonies for sending alternate electors
Here’s video of a van dropping off 100s of thousands of ballots around 3 AM in Detroit w/o any GOP monitors Where are the felonies for these election stealers? pic.twitter.com/H4I7eHkIGl — DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) July 18, 2023
John Podesta, role playing Joe Biden in Transition Integrity Project's summer 2020 simulation to ensure a Biden presidency even if Trump won the election, openly plotted sending a separate elector slate
-- the same thing DOJ just indicted Trump electors for considering doing pic.twitter.com/idF1CuV9YC — Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) July 19, 2023
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